
Class P ^^6S57 . 

Book Ar^L. 

Copyright^^. 1±LA 



ESSAYS 



BY 



IRENE CLARK SAFFORD 




BOSTON 

RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 



Copyright, 1920, by Richard G. Badger 



All Rights Reserved 






Made in the United States of America 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 

MAY 27 !920 
©aA570194 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Misuse of Wohd Affinity in Love Affairs 7 

The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons 14 

The Blight of Poverty as a Factor in Society 21 

Curiosity of Mankind about the Other Side 26 

A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to Mankind .... 33 

The Place of the Home in the Plan of Life 40 

The Fear of Life and Its Evil Effects 47 

The Visible and thi: Invisible Forces in the Game of Life . . 53 

About Heroes 60 

The Pursuit of Ghosts 65 

A Feature of the Hour 70 

Our Dumb Relations 74 

Prophets and Disciples 78 

Satan in Literature 83 

Concerning Happiness 87 

Individuality 91 

Science and Laughter 95 

Life and Literature 100 

Enemies and Revenges 105 

The Gospel of Despair 109 

Environment 114 

The Riddle of Life 119 

Concerning Slander 123 

Woes of the Misunderstood 126 

Other People's Ills 130 

Telling the Truth 135 

The Touch of Nature 140 

Practical Side of Brotherly Love 145 

Dreams and Visions 150 

Laws and Lawmakers 154 

The Boy and the Man 158 

Concerning Fools 163 

Tangles of Life 167 

The Virtues of the Relation of Brother and Sister .... 171 

The Ethics and Morals of the Laughing Habit 178 

3 



CONTENTS 



The Current Demand for an Inspired Millionaire 
The Modern Demand for the Virtue of Cheerfulness 
Enchantment of the Green-robed Forest Monarchs 
The Salutary Influence of the Spirit of the Winds 
The Secrets of Nature as Revealed by the Night 
The Charm of the South to the Northern Visitor 
The End and Ends of Life 
Twin Stars in Love's Firmament 
Power of the Written Word . 
Note Time by Its Gain, Not Loss 

A Word More 

Love's Troubles 

Marriage as a Duty 
The Word and the Idea 
As the War Revealed Her 



PAGE 

185 
192 
199 

206 
213 
219 
226 
230 
233 
236 
241 
246 
250 
253 
257 



ESSAYS 



E S S A V S 



MISUSE OF WORD "AFFINITY" IN LOVE AFFAIRS 

YOU may give a dog a bad name and hang him. It's 
different with ideas. Aye, too, with the words that 
express tliem. Thoughts are things, and words that deal 
with realities are not easily disposed of. "Affinity has been 
given a bad name and hung," says a disgusted commentator 
upon the signs of the times. "Soul affinities" are some- 
thing he had never heard of till reaching our shores, de- 
clared the grand old commander of the Salvation Army to 
Boston interviewers. A fearful invention of modern sin- 
ners too dreadful to discuss is about his characterization of 
it, and who can blame him in the face of the use that has 
been made of it in these latter days. 

Nevertheless, the hanging is wrongly applied, the con- 
demnation misses its object. Affinity is the law that swings 
the spheres and keeps all life and matter in harmonious 
relation. Cross it anywhere and life goes wrong, and dis- 
cord displaces harmony. Every particle of matter seeks 
its affinity, every plant or organism or germ, from sea ooze 
up, crawls after it. Chemists, naturalists, scientists in all 
lines, know the calamities that ensue by the coming together 
of the uncongenial elements, the nonaffinities, in the physi- 
cal world. Nature, indeed, wastes little sentiment upon the 
matter, and makes short shrift of any of her subjects or 

7 



8 Misuse of Wo7'd "Affinity" in Love Affairs 

forces that would disregard the eternal law of attraction and 
repulsion that she has set up for their observance. 

Destructive explosions, deadl}'^ blight, war to the death, 
wait upon the mixture of the uncongenial elements and crea- 
tions through all the plant and animal kingdom. 

Every flower and shrub knows its affinity and refuses to 
take up with any other, even to the extent of withering in a 
night, the gardeners tell us, in many cases if planted beside 
the unloved alien. Botanists well know the curious tastes 
of the wild flowers, and the swift answer to its own that 
brings the fragrant white clover from the scattered wood 
ashes, the catchfl}' pink from the blasted ledge, and the 
dainty dwarf dandelion from the oily refuse dropped by the 
flying engine. What marvels in the plant world may come 
from cultivating plant affinities, the California wizard. Bur- 
bank, begins to reveal to an astonished world, and that 
greater wonders must wait upon the same law and principle 
brought to bear upon the animal world he confidently ex- 
pects. 

Shall man, then, reverse or despise this principle and 
expect to gain by it? On the contrary, is he not much like 
the plants, observing it almost unconsciously in the order- 
ing of his life and relation everywhere; from the choice of 
the companion who shows what he is, to the search for the 
"woman thou gavest me," though she commonly eludes him. 
Reverenced or derided, the native affinities, the "marriage of 
true minds" figure supremel}^ in the weal or woe of the hu- 
man family. The great and happy ones testify to this, 
too, however vaguely, and live by it whether they know it 
or not. 

That honored general who never heard of soul affinities 
till he reached our shores has plainly been living by just 



Misuse of Word ''Affinity''' in Love Affairs 9 

such union to the noble woman who shared his life work anfl 
pilgrimage with him till recently. 

Nothing but death could have parted him from his wife, 
he says, and he knows that death is but a temporary sepa- 
ration — the soul union was complete. When it comes to 
the definition of the real thing he seems equal to putting it 
in good shape, too. "The couple who have solved the prob- 
lem of loving their neighbor as tlicmselves and who enjoy 
the perfect understanding that unites them so closely that 
differences of opinion do not suggest the divorce court, 
would, I should think, be near to what you Americans term 
'soul affinities,' " he says, and it is well to have a good 
straightforward Englishman help out American mumblings 
on the subject like that. It may tend, too, to secure some 
better name for "a crime against humanity" that cloaks 
itself under the most sacred truths of life. 

Affinitj^ like marriage, has been made to stand for so 
many monstrous evils that have no relation to it that its 
true significance is almost lost in them. Why not call a 
spade a spade and let the queen of hearts preserve her own 
colors.'' Sarah Grand told the wretched truth when she 
said, "There is more nonsense talked in the abstract about 
marriage as a failure than is talked about any other branch 
of the conduct of life." The paragrapher is quite to the 
mark also who writes: "Marriage is never a failure, but 
often the contracting parties are." So it is with the subtle 
laws of attraction that draw two people together. You 
can not explain them or philosophize about them, but they 
are never a failure, though their counterfeit always is. "The 
people who claim to have found their affinity don't, as a rule, 
look as if they had found much," says one jester. No, but 
the people who have found their affinity, though they don't 



10 Misuse of Word "Affinity" in Love Affairs 

proclaim it to the public, knoAV, like the good Salvation 
Army general, that they have found everything. 

In the midst of all the scoffing and cynicism touching love 
and marriage, it is a fine thing to come upon such testimo- 
nies as some of our great ones bear to the divine beauty and 
true affinity of the tie that binds. 

Not long ago there died in New York the aged and well- 
known poet, Richard Henry Stoddard, and one who knew 
him well writes : "The sweetest story of his life was the love 
for his wife. Half a century ago he married her and for 
fifty years he made her happy. They say that true love 
and real sympathy speak without words ; that a man and a 
woman, their lives in tune, can sit hand in hand and each 
understand the very heart throbs of the other without one 
spoken word. That is true sometimes. It means a devo- 
tion that is unselfish and holy." Is it too much to expect 
that poor, selfish humanity should reach that ideal in its 
marriages .f* Well, at least to recognize it as the ideal, the 
real, even on our faulty earth, would be something for hon- 
est souls to build on. And as for sorrows and disappoint- 
ments in marriage, the writer who traces them all to the 
hour when "the mysterious door which leads to perfect sym- 
pathy is shut" knew well her ground. 

It is said that one of the recent victims of abused affinity 
admitted that she "believed in free love with some qualifica- 
tions." And there is another term that has been done to 
death by slanderous tongues. True love is always free. 
It was never bought nor bound by any power nor device 
of man. It knows no chains, but yields itself in voluntar}^ 
and joyful service and union on the strength of that very 
bond of nature and spirit which the blind world makes such 
abuse of. It is marriage's sure foundation, and besides it 
there is no other. To understand and abide by this would 



Misuse of Word "Affinity" in Love Affairs 11 

speedily end all the wretched wrangle and rupture in mari- 
tal circles and relieve us of the eternal nonsense talked and 
undertaken by those who bring all manner of creeds and 
homilies to bear upon holy matrimony. 

That brilliant ^^oung senator who declares that he would 
rather talk to his wife than to all of the world is not likely 
to run after any affinities not nestling at his own fireside. 
No doubt, too, there are plenty of others in the same safe 
and happ3' case. For Sarah Grand is right again in opin- 
ing that the majority of married people are jogging along 
very comfortably and are reasonably happy in their united 
state, which supposes, of course, that the mysterious door 
which leads to genuine sympathy is not quite shut to them. 
That native and subtle attraction which draws two people 
from all the world of humanity to each other should have 
force enough to hold them together if nature is at all true 
to itself. 

There should remain enough appreciation of the situa- 
tion to make one blush to own an affinity with a nature that 
has shown itself devoid of honor and decency in any re- 
lation. 

It is no wonder that men who abuse their wives and vio- 
late every sacred obligation "don't, as a rule, look as if they 
had found much" when they take up with their affinities. 
As a rule they haven't. If it is a severe test to be judged 
by the company you keep, what must it be to be judged by 
the one you own as your soul's affinity .^ Marriage itself 
makes a terrible drain on the individual character in this 
respect. A suspicion of some poor leanings in the man or 
M^oman who accepts an inferior person for a life companion 
inevitably arises — and perhaps is commonly justifiable. 

But what must it be to stand committed to some dishon- 
orable creature with a record for "crimes against human- 



12 Misuse of Word "Affinity" in Love Affairs 

ity" and wrongs to his own household as his soul affinity? 
Whether able to live up to it or not, it would seem to be 
one whose soul was white as the whitest, that any high- 
minded mortal would wish to tie to in that self-revealing 
fashion. 

Perhaps there may be a bad lot of "affinities" in this 
fallen world, and to bring them together as generally as 
possible may be a way to work along the true nature line 
for the happy affiliation of the better sort. Paul probably 
realized this when he wrote the Corinthians. "Be ye not 
unequally yoked together," and if the Christian world had 
heeded his admonition no doubt the matrimonial bark would 
have been sailing on smooth shining seas by this time. It 
is hunting the affinity in season, and not out of season, that 
makes all the difference. Once unequally yoked together not 
all the saints or sages of the universe offer much help for 
a mortal. But even the worst publicans and sinners who 
have some meeting points of sympathy and equality may 
sometimes work out each other's purification when yoked 
together, if they do not too speedily work out each other's 
extinction — and in either case the world is benefited by it. 

"One never need be afraid of catching love a second time," 
says that earnest jester, Jerome K. Jerome. "Like the 
measles, we take it only once. The man who has had it can 
go into the most dangerous places, and play the most fool- 
hardy tricks with perfect safety. He can look into sunny 
eyes and not be dazzled. He can listen to siren voices, yet 
sail on with steady helm. He can clasp white hands in his 
and feel no electric thrill." 

Clearly such a man is immune from the affinity microbe 
and the good people who are alarmed about it might lay 
this to heart. For it is, indeed, more than the "idle thoughts 
of an idle fellow," that rise to the truth that love is one and 



Misuse of Word '^Affinity" in Love Affairs 13 

indivisible, and though admiration and affection may come 
in at the open door of the human heart often, and ever, yet 
"their great celestial master, Love, in his royal progress, 
pays but one visit and departs." As Alexander Dumas 
says, "Whoever has loved twice has never loved at all." 
For "love is not an earthly fire, it is divine; not chance, not 
an unforeseen shock causes it to spring up, the universal 
harmony creates it," he submits, and they who seek the 
heavenly sense and not debasing nonsense in the idea of 
soul affinities might find it here. "Happy are those," says 
these writers, "who can kindle their earthly altars at love's 
flame," and they might truly add, unhappy and insecure 
are all those who attempt to kindle them at any other. 



THE CHANGING SEASON AND ITS OBVIOUS 

LESSONS 

REALLY if people will keep on dying, unnecessary as 
it is, some speculation in futurities ought to be found 
to match it— not, to be sure, that saints and sages of all 
ages have failed to paint future blessedness or damnation 
for the race generally, or to declare how other people should 
look upon the private war with death. But to bring the 
reality of it home to any mortal creature so that he should 
truly shape some future at all worth while in his honest de- 
sires, to relieve his human dread of death, has not been 
within the power of any master or mystic in the whole 
strange field. The crowning mystery, which the ancient 
Brahmin declared the deepest in all human life, still re- 
mains, that all men die, yet no man believes that he is 
mortal. 

There is no nicer work that advancing psychology could 
turn its attention to than this strange inconsistency in the 
attitude of dying man. If by its second or psychic sight it 
could draw from it the scientific conclusion that they are not 
dying, why then the speculation in the here or the hereafter 
might receive an impulse that all the religions of the world 
have not been able to give them. Perhaps the time of the 
falling leaf and withering flower is not so favorable to the 
life vision the new psychology would foster, as some more 
gladsome days of summer, yet the very fact that it has been 
spreading its image of decay before human eyes through 
all the centuries without at all persuading man that he shall 

14 



The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons 15 

fall as the leaf is a point of no minor significance in the per- 
sistence of the life dreams uppermost in the human soul. 

What Stevenson calls man's healthy indifference to death 
goes deeper than any "fire, sensibility and volume" of his 
physical nature can explain, else youth would absorb the 
whole strength of it and age make its chief business to pre- 
pare itself for the narrow house without demur. It is a 
fact in human experience, however, that though 3'^outh may 
show a more reckless disregard of life, the hold upon life 
and the schemes for it grow more insistent as the years in- 
crease. Some of the grandest achievements in human his- 
tory Avere undertaken by men far past the prime of life, 
who deliberately started their ambitious enterprises as if 
death had no possible chance of stealing in upon their full 
completion. The mystery of this general attitude of all 
mankind toward the problem of life and death is quite as 
Stevenson presents it when he says : "We live the time that 
a match flickers ; we pop the cork of a ginger beer bottle, 
and the earthquake swallows us on the instant. Is it not 
odd, is it not incongruous, is it not in the highest sense of 
human speech incredible, that we should think so highly of 
the ginger beer and regard so little the devouring earth- 
quake?" 

Since life and death got foothold on the same planet that 
incongruity has endured and not till one gains the victory 
over the other can the incredibility of it entirely disappear. 
The most natural conclusion that could attend such incred- 
ible conduct in rational beings is so simple that more than 
a handful of seers or sages one would think might have found 
in it what one of them calls the "blazing evidence" that life 
holds the palm, crowds out the idea of death, that the de- 
vouring earthquake does not devour, that, "if our bark 
sinks 'tis to another sea," and that it is high time some more 



16 The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons 

general and tangible ideas of what awaits man on those 
deeper seas of being should become a part of human 
thoughts, dreams and plans. If there is anything conceiv- 
able that could take the sting from death it would certainly 
be some natural, familiar, common conception of the un- 
broken chain of being which science as well as religion could 
legitimately indorse. The position of the great philosopher 
Swedenborg, who turned the whole current of theology to- 
ward the rational, tangible ideas of a future state, seems 
the one in point. "As the church's faith was overthrown 
by science, so on the basis of science must it be rebuilt," 
he states, and the trend of modern teaching on the subject 
largely confirms the claim. 

Spencer's argument for the reality of the things that per- 
sist in consciousness has laid hold of many thinkers, and 
the logic of life which can be made to fit with no other theory 
than the continuity of it shapes much of the reasoning which 
all writers bring to the subject. It is men of science, in 
the medical and other professions, who, like Dr. William H. 
Thompson, in his article on "The Future State," in a recent 
publication, give the affirmative side of the problem in its 
strongest, fullest light. Indeed, to . reduce the whole sub- 
ject of spirit life and law to a science is the work of some of 
the profoundest thinkers of to-day. "The lawful truths of 
spirit are more scientific than the constantly shifting facts 
of intellectual standards. Hence this is the only true sci- 
ence," says a recent writer on "The Science of Being," who 
aims to make a practical application of long-cherished truths 
of the spirit to man's life and future. 

The spiritual principles that underlie all human life are 
shaping the theories of leaders and teachers in every walk 
of life, so that it is not an extravagant charge which one 
fiery writer makes when he avers that a conspicuous leader 



The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons 17 

even in the political world is making his grand success 
through dramatizing the Ten Commandments. The appli- 
cation of spirit laws and truths to this present world may 
be the first step in getting them comfortably applied to the 
next one. But considering the difficulty men in the mass 
find in building upon that basis, it would clearly be well for 
the individual to do more to achieve the happy foundation 
for himself. Maeterlinck realizes this when he says "it be- 
hooves every man to formulate some theory of life and the 
universe for himself," and the probability is that most any 
man left to himself can fashion a heaven and a hereafter 
that is not so far from one the gracious powers designed for 
him, but that he could safely sit down and refresh himself 
in the light of it through all his mortal days. 

The encouraging feature in the case is that by the laws 
of life and goodness no finite dream can surpass the joys he 
may mark out for himself (that are prepared for him) in 
that future state. Accepting simply the one incontrovert- 
ible principle of science and philosophy that change, but not 
destruction of even the smallest atom, can prevail through 
all creation bounds, the whole embarrassing problem of 
death, and evil, which moves in the shadow of death, drop 
out of the reckoning, and a chance to bring dreams and 
realities together in a world of goodness is the legitimate, 
the logical result with all the possibilities of joy that may 
wait upon it. The fashion of that joy may vary, to be 
sure, with the individual's growth and capacity, but that it 
is his by divine right and heritage of the spirit is a part 
of that "science of being" which the growing revelations of 
all law and truth are making known to man. It is the be- 
lief, too, of the great masters in the field that man's whole 
life here would be transformed and glorified by substituting 
this nobler and more philosophical view of death and the 



18 The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons 

hereafter for the vague and grewsome ones that, in spite of 
all his lofty religious creeds and professed beliefs in a blessed 
hereafter, he still clings to. A recent speaker on the 
preciousness of death, as declared in the sacred writings, 
says: "A change which is precious in the sight of the Lord 
and a joy to the angels should be made to yield something 
of spiritual uplift and eternal outlook to our lives." This 
is the larger, happier note which the spread of spiritual 
truth and the better understanding of the laws of life bring 
to the subject. It is beyond even the best of the old reckon- 
ing, which submits : 

If we do well here, we will do well there. 

And I could tell you no more if I preached till fourscore. 

It permits that rejected "more," and how much it is only 
the soul that knows its own longings and desires can esti- 
mate. 

Man may deceive himself as to the means of happiness, 
but his desire for it can never die out, nor cease to appeal 
to the being who implanted it in him for its lawful fulfill- 
ment. Moreover, it is true that even the worst of men per- 
ceive a gleam of the divine, the good and pure, in that "some- 
thing still" called happiness "for which they bear to live or 
dare to die." Hence if the ruling passion lives on and ful- 
fills itself in "an ampler ether and diviner air" the heaven 
of happiness must be reached by all who keep the dream of 
it, however perverted, alive in their souls. There is no 
doubt that man's idea of heaven, like his idea of God, Avill 
undergo some startling changes when he gets there, and 
mainly because he does not give a more cordial welcome to 
the higher thought of it here to which nature as well as 
saints and philosophers invite him. 

There is not a 3'^ellowing forest of autumn nor restless 



The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons 19 

wave that beats on the shore that does not carry a meanmg 
far beyond any that the poets of the falling leaf and ebbhig 
tide convey to us, A sense of the infinity of being and 
of the beauty and peace in which nature yields herself to 
its changing but endless round brings a kindred spell to 
the right beholder which can 

Make time break 
And let us pent-up creatures through 
Into eternity, our due. 

It was thus Benson declares it when, at the sight of a 
deep wood veiled in an autumn mist, or a shining wave half 
stranded on the sea beach, he says "one feels by instinct 
and by intuition that one's own mind is simply a part of a 
large and immortal life, which for a time is fenced by a little 
barrier of identity in the human just as a tiny pool of sea 
water is for a few hours separated from the great ocean tide 
to which it belongs." In her splendors of decay as in her 
loveliness of revival nature speaks of an underlying life of 
beauty and jo}' of which man is a part, and, but for losing 
his primal consciousness in some deep pass of the human, 
would know himself a part, as Adam and Eve did in their 
happy garden. The fall of man no doubt is somehow con- 
nected with the "delusion," as Benson expresses it, that he 
is alone and apart, instead of one with the great ocean of 
life and joy. 

It is certain that the closer man gets to nature, the less 
he fears death. It was in the purple fastnesses of the great 
Sierras that the light broke upon Joaquin Miller, and, look- 
ing up to its cloud-piercing peaks, he cried : "Death is de- 
lightful. Death is dawn." So was it that Whitman hears 
"whispers of heavenly death" through "mystical breezes 
wafted soft and low," and reads the symbol of it in "Ripples 



20 The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons 

of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing." 
Nature makes change and decay so far from terrible that it 
must be through some frightful break with her that man has 
managed to fill them with such grewsomc horrors as the final 
change still carries. To restore it to something of her 
gentle and orderly process, if not eliminate it altogether, is 
the effort of a goodly company of mental and psychic teach- 
ers, and assuredly it is not to be despised. But when all is 
told some measure of familiarity of truer touch with the 
world to be is the great help needed for people who are not 
to find themselves mourning like the "woman in glory," for 
their house, their bread, their sheets to v,^ash and whiten. 
Browning was never more the master seer in every human 
field than when he wrote : 

New hopes should animate the world. 
New light should dawn from new revealings 
To a race weighed down so long, forgotten so long. 
Thus should the heaven reserved for us 

At last receive the creatures whom no unwonted splendors 
blind. 



THE BLIGHT OF POVERTY AS A FACTOR IN 

SOCIETY 

THE "sociological woman" who proposed killing off the 
children of the slums should have taken counsel with 
the sociological man. Then she would have known that her 
humane effort would be only a work of supererogation. 
John Spargo, in his notable book, "The Bitter Cry of the 
Children," shows how effectually the business takes care of 
itself. Eighty thousand babies a year succumb to their 
deadly environment in the sweet Christian cities of our land. 
And this, too, when they are born sound and healthy and 
with the same physical chance for life that tlie most favored 
child of wealth and luxury can show. "Poverty is the Herod 
of modern civilization'* that slaughters the children of one 
year old and under with neater dispatch than the Judean 
tyrant ever knew. 

So far, so good, as the heroic method of the woman re- 
ferred to goes. For they are put out of their misery and 
squalor, and society is saved a new influx of criminals and 
imbeciles. Nevertheless, a new factor has entered into the 
reckoning, and one of such vital import that every lover of 
the race should take it into consideration at once. It de- 
velops along the line of the long contention between heredity 
and environment for controlling influence in human life, and, 
as set forth by the latest research, declares emphatically 
that this old biologic quarrel touching modifications in the 
human species must stop both in the interest of disease and 
the uplifting of the race. 

21 



2S The Blight of Poverty as a Fhctor in Society 

Heredity in the old sense is nonexistent. The anomalies 
are neither due to inherent wickedness of the germ plasm, 
nor are they inscrutable acts of God, but are due to definite 
physical causes. The offspring of normal people are not 
foreordained to be normal nor the children of degenerates 
to be damned. From this it follows conclusively that the 
admittedly healthy babe of the slums could have an equal 
chance with the babe of the castle, if equally good physical 
causes could be brought to bear upon it, and it, in short, 
may not be too much to say with such writers that "were the 
social programme adequate, an entire generation could be 
taken in hand and elevated at a jump." 

Meanwhile, the significant fact that the problem of pov- 
erty lies back of this and pinching want declares itself, 
here as elsewhere, the grand agent of human destruction, 
might narrow still farther the work of the humanitarian and 
reformer. Indeed, if the cause of all human ills is once fixed 
upon, why should not all human effort and all human gospel 
be concentrated upon the intelligent purpose of removing it. 
"Feed my sheep," "oppress not the poor," "give to him that 
needeth" ; this is an old Gospel and, in the light of sociology 
and science, about the only one the world requires for its 
uplifting. 

It is rounding out the circle most significantly when we 
find age and infancy uniting in such testimonies to the 
wrong in the case as the authorities now give us. "Povert}'^ 
is the Herod of modern civilization" that slaughters the 
innocents by the thousands and tens of thousands, writes 
Spargo. "Remove poverty and nearly all the ills of life 
and society would vanish with it," says another close stu- 
dent of the social problem. It is going far afield to talk of 
killing off the degenerate and unfortunate, he humanely adds, 
when simply bettering their physical condition would lift 



The Blight of Poverty as a F\actor in Society 23 

them out of the deforming blackness into the light of good 
and useful citizens. "Poverty is the slough of despond," 
says an older and stronger writer still, "which Bunyan saw 
in his dream, and into which good books may be tossed for- 
ever without results. To make people industrious, prudent, 
skillful and intelligent they must be relieved from want. If 
you would have the slave show the virtues of the freeman 
you must first make him free." 

The wonder is that gibes and judgment, preaching and 
prayers, treatises and arguments, are alike unavailing in 
the face of an evil that all men recognize as the deadliest 
one that afflicts society. Not all those who trumpet the 
club speaker's proposal to chloroform slum babies abroad 
pause to consider the cause given for such extreme measures. 
Disclaiming all desire for notoriety, she declares: "I sug- 
gest this because I have worked myself thin trying to inter- 
est municipal officers and philanthropic individuals in the 
poverty and frightful conditions prevailing in New York. 
I have talked myself hoarse. I have lectured. I have 
written letters to authorities without effect," and it 
is because "no other remedy can be found" that she would 
put an end "to miserable children to whom living is only 
prolonged agony." 

But meantime for teachers or reformers to go on preach- 
ing any other gospel or propounding any other method of 
salvation for the race till this fundamental one is put in 
operation is rather a waste of breath and ammunition. 
"Here," says Mr. Spargo, "is the real reconstruction of 
society, the building of healthy bodies and brains," and "to 
fight poverty in its dire effect upon the child," to say noth- 
ing of the adult, he tells us that the "co-operation of all the 
constructive forces in society, private and public, is neces- 
sary." He is not the first one to suggest either that pen- 



24 The Blight of Poverty as a Fkictor in Society 

sions to mothers dependent upon their earnings should be 
a prime care of any government tliat would have good citi- 
zens and members of society turned out from human homes. 
But how much attention is even our own proud government 
giving to these sociological truths? It still seems better to 
it to build prisons and reform schools for such boy criminals 
and degenerates as now infest our cities than to give poor, 
overworked mothers the chance to bear and rear their chil- 
dren in the sane and healthful atmosphere that would save 
them all. 

Perhaps it is not strange that the discouraged worker in 
these fields feels at times that there is nothing but chloro- 
form for the unfortunates, so strangely cold and deaf is the 
ear which those in authority turn to these vital questions. 
Theoretically every decent citizen professes to desire the ele- 
vation of the human race. Practically he will give more 
intelligent care to a breed of cattle or poultry along scientific 
lines than to a whole generation of children. And this, too, 
when science assures him that by the same care of the chil- 
dren the whole race could be elevated at a jump. 

The modern Herod is not heredity ; it is environment, pov- 
erty of nourishment and air, unsanitary and bad economic 
conditions, is the reading of the case John Spargo brings to 
the surface. And still the desperately earnest woman, who 
has worked herself thin trying to bring philanthropic people 
to the help of the impoverished children, finds it so hopeless 
that she wants to chloroform them all — the children, not the 
philanthropists — though perhaps one might take it either 
way. No doubt, at any rate, a new order of pilanthropists 
should be raised up to meet the present position and illumi- 
nation of the social problem, and if they can not do some- 
thing better than distribute tracts and books, and cast-off 
clothing, to "meet a starving people's needs," or still "the 



The Blight of Poverty as a Factor in Society 25 

bitter cry of the children," then the teachers and the 
preachers and the noisy reformers might as well retire from 
their labors and let the world slide downhill as fast as it will. 
At least, we should not be making a mock of people's mis- 
fortunes, and a hypocrisy of all the humane and pious pro- 
fessions we trumpeted through the earth. To be shown a 
way of salvation for the race and turn our backs on it 
should at least end any further pretensions that we are 
loftily concerned in saving anybody but ourselves. 



CURIOSITY OF MANKIND ABOUT THE OTHER 

SIDE 

I ALWAYS have been curious to know what was on the 
other side," he said, and slipped away in dreamy sleep 
to find out. And "summer was in the world, sweet singing." 
And he loved the summer, and the birds and flowers, this 
gentle Uncle Remus, who wrote himself kin to every living 
thing in the Father's world. Why should the great unknown 
have beckoned him with such mystic spell? How could he 
bear to die and leave so much beneath the summer sun ? The 
poet says that 

When he heard the darkness calling 
He knew that darkness dreamed of light. 

But, no, he only guessed it. He was curious to know. 
He was strong to try. He died in July and in the July issue 
of his magazine the note repeats itself,- 

I shall make a brave death. 

Stand, then, by and see 
How old comrade Life and I 

Can part company. 

To part in a cr}^ for higher knowledge is not entirely new 
to men who have been going out in philosophic question of 
the "great perhaps" in all ages. But that the desire to 
know may become a ruling passion that can rob death of 
its terrors seems not improbable in the growing insistence 
of that knocking at the gates of the unseen which the times 

26 



Curiosity of Mankind About the Other Side 27 

record. More than one suicide in recent days has given 
"comrade life" the slip through the strength of his curiosity 
to know what was on the other side. A strange reaction 
from that dread of something after death appears in the 
haunting desire of all men to know what that something is. 
It is not only the psychical societies that compact with the 
departing comrade to help bore a tunnel, as Sir Oliver 
Lodge puts it, beneath the roaring waters of time and 
eternity, whereby the two worlds may come into communica- 
tion, but even an orthodox parent was but lately shaken out 
of his dying slumber by a devoted daughter who craved a 
last pledge that he would in some way speak to her from 
the other shore. 

That an existence which holds death in its reckoning owes 
some better account of it than has yet been given, is a con- 
viction of many thinkers, while the sense of the unknown, 
forever haunting the known, makes the true enjoyment of 
life a thing impossible. "Our only chance in this world of 
a complete happiness," writes Mr. Arthur Symons, "lies in 
the measure of our success in shutting the eyes of the mind 
and deadening its sense of hearing, and dulling the keenness 
of its apprehension of the unknown. To live through a 
single day with that overpowering consciousness of our real 
position, which, in the moments in which alone it mercifully 
comes, is like blinding light or the thrust of a flaming sword, 
would drive any man out of his senses. And so there is a 
great, silent conspiracy between us to forget death; all our 
lives are spent in busily forgetting death." 

That is one phase of the subject, but another quite as 
forceful shows itself in the determination to make death de- 
liver up its secrets and let in some knowledge of the life be- 
yond. "It is a strange fact," says a writer on this side of the 
case, "that this generation has no fear of death. We have 



28 Curiosity of Mankind About the Other Side 

a morbid dread of disease, a horror of age and decay, but 
we do not fear to die." Death as the great revealer is 
verily coming to be courted bj the human race, and unless 
science can probe the darkness, or religion recruit man's 
faith, suicides for enlightenment may not be an impossible 
development of man's desire to know what shall be after 
him under the sun. 

It is a curious circumstance that it is in the path of the 
suicide that one of the greatest of modern painters shows 
death robbed of his last chance. The picture, "Death on 
the Pale Horse," was suggested to the artist, Ryder, by the 
suicide of a man who had lost all his savings on the race 
track. It presents a bleak and lonely track, shadowed by 
weird shapes of lowering cloud and distant hill, where death 
having "ridden down all rivals, is condemned to ride round 
forever deprived of the dear companionship of his enemy 
and victim, man." It is not exactly the Christian idea of 
the victory over death, but it certainly might suggest the 
short work man would make of it if he took the mystery of 
life and death into his own hands, either as a matter of 
escape or illumination. It would seem also to carry small 
encouragement for the self-slayer, however effective his 
method of robbing death of his pastime, since a black pall of 
desolation and emptiness covers the very field of the suicide's 
operation and leaves a sense of utter annihilation the only 
one that follows him. It is the very opposite of the apoca- 
lyptic vision of death's vanquishment, where living victors 
in the tabernacle of the Most High hear the resounding 
note, "There shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor 
crying." Life reigns in the one case and death in the other, 
and art has issued a canon against self-slaughter of telling 
character, whether designed or not. 



Curiosity of Mankind About the OtJier Side 29 

The attempts of artist natures to probe death's secrets are 
told elsewhere than on canvas in some cases, but still tlie 
curtain drops with the last breath. Not long ago a famous 
Russian author undertook to try the last pass for himself 
and his fellows. He committed suicide and arranged to give 
all the light that could come to him to his friends in writing. 
Having opened the veins of his left arm he writes, "I am 
indescribably happy. There is a sweet taste in my mouth 
though I am unable to quench my thirst Avith water. Every- 
thing around me is filled with a beautiful blue smoke full of 
the finest perfume. To die seems great happiness." So 
far so good — but the rest is silence. Of what the friends 
most longed to hear there is not a word. "Death, like gen- 
eration, is a secret of nature," said Aurelius, and whether 
of nature or of God man makes small headway in seeking to 
probe it. The oldest science and the newest meet on the 
same plane without establishing anything. 

A famous French scientist lately submits that at death 
the soul, or astral body, escapes like a nebulous globe. 
"When my wife died," he says, "a nebulous globe escaped 
from her like a soul." But does he consider how long ago 
Heraclitus declared that "the soul is a dry light which flies 
out of the body at death as lightning escapes from a cloud?" 
Stories of suspended animation are as old as stories of hu- 
man life, but what evidence of the tales brought back by them 
is of a kind to satisfy human intelligence.'* Even the charge 
of skepticism that stands in the way of it is ancient as the 
hills, for does not Plutarch tell us that "the knowledge of 
divine things for the most part is lost to us by incredulity?" 
That, too, is an unproved claim, for who of all the believing 
saints, save in a mystic dream, has ever unbarred the gates 
of death far enough to give humanity a reliable vision of the 



30 Curiosity of ManJdnd About the Other Side 

other shore? Powers beyond man's reach still guard the 
avenues of sight, and we "are all of us better believers than 
we can possibly give a reason for." 

The gain is in the ages that have so widely changed fear 
to expectancy and given place for a pleasing curiosity in 
the things to come to enter into the death sentence which 
both nature and theology in their sterner aspect had made 
so terrible. Such horrors as but lately hung over the poor 
soul's curiosity to know what was on the other side only 
writers like Mrs. Stone could do justice to, or that fiery 
Jonathan Edwards, who pictured it dangling over the pit 
of hell in a manner not calculated to quicken expectancy or 
speculation as to the future state. The better ideas of 
death, quite as much as the better ideas of life, mark the 
progress of the race starward. The relation of the living 
to the dead has much to do with this. "Dead and forgotten" 
has been too much the mournful story of those who have 
crossed the bar, though still some gentle souls like Dickens 
have earnestly reminded us that though the dead may not 
need us, yet forever and forever we need the dead. 

Verily, is it not rude "to leave the dead wholely dead," 
when in such abounding being they declare their immortal- 
ity.'' Rounding out time by eternity is that part of seeing 
life whole which wipes death out of the reckoning with great 
souls. As a guess at the beyond, too, it is the most logical 
thing in the count. "A brother to the eternal light," as 
some one so beautifully calls Harris, could well afford to 
let his fanc}^ rove in curious questioning of the other side. 
Nor can the humblest of earth's dwellers afford to leave him 
"wholly dead" who "made the lowly cabin fires light the 
far windows of the world." It is a pretty story that tells 
of a tame rabbit appearing mysteriously from undiscover- 
able quarters at the dead author's home within a week after 



Curiosity of Mankind About the Other Side 31 

his departure, and persistently making its bed beneath his 
window, as if in tender tribute to the friend who drew Br'er 
Rabbit into the universal friendship. None can say, either, 
that some subtle chord of sympathy and relationship did 
not bring the strange, shy visitant in that supreme hour 
to a spot linked so closely with its tiny life. 

The unities of being, the tie that binds all living creatures, 
are but dimly guessed by us, and the mysteries of life lying 
all about us are deep and baffling enough to make the mys- 
tery of death not so very strange after all. Emerson's idea 
that the power that can manage the one can safely be trusted 
to take care of the other is the logic of the situation, and 
the good cheer of it is with him, too, when he adds : "I have 
seen what glories of climate, of summer mornings and even- 
ings, of midnight sky; I have enjoyed the benefits of all the 
complex machinery of arts and civilization, and its results 
of comfort. The good power can easily provide me millions 
more as good." Physicians and scientists are struggling 
as never before to prolong man's days upon earth. Every 
week turns out sage treatises admonishing us to take care 
of all that we think — yea, even of wretched meat and drink 
— that we may continue in the land of the living. One thing 
makes them all valueless. They do not master the secret 
of perennial youth. Life without that is a thankless offer- 
ing. Death as the way to it is a boon none would forego. 

The English writer speaks to the mark in declaring that 
it is age, not death, that this generation fears. No sane 
man would want to live 200 years, or even 100, dwelling upon 
the sordid animal affairs of eating and drinking, says an 
American writer who weighs the dietetic counsels. Better 
to have a church fall on him or some such kindly accident 
carry him off. Till youth and native vigor that set man 
free from these poor proddings of the flesh can come at 



32 Curiosity of Mankind About the Other Side 

science's call, the prolongation of his days holds little charm 
for him. Rather, his heart is with the poet, who prays : 

When the warp and woof are thinning, 
And the daylight is half blind. 
Give me death, that I may find 
Life, upon some morning height. 
Sheen and sheer above the night. 



A CHAPTER ON DOGS AND THEIR SERVICE TO 

MANKIND 

HERO DOGS" is a good name for a book, but it would 
take a great many books to do justice to the subject. 
In all the volumes that have already been given to "man's best 
friend" the half has not been told. Writers find themselves 
swamped in an attempt to enumerate tlie instances of hero- 
ism which the dogs of any little town or neighborhood can 
furnish. The good woman who has lately organized a "So- 
ciety of Hero Dogs" is likely to be overwhelmed by the com- 
pany of eligible subjects. Scarcely a home can be found 
where some tale of fidelity or sacrifice on the part of the 
hero dog does not enter into its history or traditions, and 
more than the poor Indian finds it hard to dream of any 
heaven where his faithful dog shall not bear him company. 

From the dogs of the Zodiac to the three-headed dog of 
the Styx, there is no place so high or low in man's universe 
that the dog can not find entrance to it. Classic literature 
especially abounds in tributes to the dog, whether Ulysses 
or Alcibiades furnish the varying text. It was the famous 
epitaph of Lord Byron on his dog. Boatswain, however, that 
put the noble dog in his true place among earth's habitants. 
"Near this spot," wrote the poet, "are deposited the remains 
of one who possessed beauty without vanity, strength with- 
out insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues 
of man without his vices. This praise, which would be un- 
meaning flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a 
just tribute to Boatswain." 

33 



34 A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to Mankind 

Comparisons between man and the dog are commonly on 
the dog's side, and even hero worship shows a leaning in that 
direction that the "Society of Hero Dogs" but tardily 
recognizes. "I have known dogs and I have known school 
heroes that, set aside the fur, could hardly have been told 
apart,'* said Stevenson. Unquestionably if the refinement 
of heroism lies in giving one's life for another, no company 
of school heroes can match the army of faithful dogs that 
have given their lives for their masters or their boy play- 
mates, to say nothing of those that have perished in the 
cause of science and exploration. It is quite to the mark 
that one writer exclaims, "Now that the hurrahing over polar 
expeditions is dying down, humane journals are pointing 
out that a portion of the praise bestowed upon North Pole 
explorers should be awarded to the unfortunate dogs, with- 
out whose services, given at a great cost of suffering to 
themselves, the attempt at pole searching would have been 
impossible." 

It is Nansen himself who gives the force to this position 
in the brief quotation from his book "Farthest North." 
For after admitting the horrible cruelty practiced upon 
these polar dogs, he says, "When I think of all those splendid 
animals, toiling for us without a murmur as long as they 
could move a muscle, never getting any thanks or so much 
as a kind word, daily writhing under the lash, I have moments 
of bitter self-reproach." It is Nansen, too, who points the 
fearful moral that such treatment of man's faithful friend 
carries. "It is a sad part of expeditions of this kind," he 
writes, "that one systematically kills all better feelings until 
only hard-hearted egoism remains." This is the more hu- 
man side of the dog question which science and civilization 
are largely responsible for. When man roamed free through 
the glad early world regardless of poles or "world plaudits," 



A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to Mankind 35 

his faithful dog served many of the purposes which the 
involved machiner}^ of civilization have since made necessary? 
from pantries to scavengers. The Kentucky colonel who 
furnishes a late paragraph for the "wet and dry" columns 
preserves the traditions of those happy days. "He ate a 
breakfast every day," we are told, "which consisted of a 
nice juicy stake, a bottle of whisky and a dog. He had the 
dog eat the steak." The wandering Ulysses needed no 
pantry nor scavenger to care for the left-overs from his 
daily meal. The dog disposed of it all, and half the sani- 
tation problems of to-day were done away with. 

It was when Alcibiades cut off his dog's tail to divert 
the unwelcome attentions of the Athenians from himself, 
that the more selfish and inhuman uses of his four-legged 
friend began to show themselves in man. The bobtailed 
curs and horses of the present day are a living commentary 
upon the heartlessness and ingratitude of the gay Athenian 
youth toward the splendid animal that had clung to him in 
patient watchfulness through many a bout that had put his 
human companions to flight. That they should cease to 
comment upon his crooked ways in turning their attention 
to his bobtailed dog was the brilliant excuse of the young 
poet and philosopher for the abuse of his famous pet. 

The amount of abuse that the dog will stand and cling still 
to a "miserable, thankless master" is a thing unparalleled 
in the whole world of sentient creatures, and that man has 
taken advantage of it in so many ways is one of the poorest 
things in all his history. Sometimes it comes from a lack of 
intelligence which the wonderful sagacity of the dog makes 
pitiful. But lately a beautiful shepherd dog came to his 
death through just such woeful stupidity on the part of man. 
For years he had been the pet and servant of a family liv- 
ing in the wooly West, where a watchdog's services were no 



36* A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to Mankind 

sinecure. From tramps to coyotes and rattlesnakes, he had 
guarded the household and little ones from many a threat- 
ened danger, and bore numerous battle scars from savage 
animals encountered in the children's path — in one case 
being frightfully gored by an infuriated cow that bore down 
upon the toddling baby. Hitched to a sled, he pulled the 
children to school through the snows of winter, and watched 
them safely past the frail bridge over a roaring creek in 
summer — never failing to be at his post when the hour of 
their return arrived. 

When in the course of human events one daughter married 
and went into a remote part of the region, he became the 
mail carrier to bear notes back and forth from the two 
homes. From the hour that the first note was tied about 
his neck with the simple word "Take it to Mamie," he never 
misunderstood or failed in his mission ; and, more wonder- 
ful still, being told to wait for an answer, he would settle 
down on Mamie's stoop till she tied the white scrap about 
his neck, when he fled like a deer through wood and mead, 
back to the old home. Sometimes the storm made the creek 
high and the way beset with difficulties, but the faithful 
messenger always managed to preserve the note intact. On 
one occasion the dark hours came before the rural deliverer 
could make his way through the tangled wood and swollen 
stream to the daughter's cottage. 

It happened, too, by one of those cruel turns of fate no 
creature can account for, that an alarm of mad dogs had 
that day disturbed the scattered families of the neighbor- 
hood, and Mamie and her husband had gone to bed with the 
terror of them before their eyes. So, when the eager "Tow- 
ser" leaped on the porch, all wet and muddy, and began his 
friendly wiggling and wagging against the familiar door, 
the poor, stupid human creatures within never paused to 



A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to Mankind 37 

consider that it might be tjieir own noble friend bearing the 
home message to them, but, taking him for one of the mad- 
dest of the mad dogs in their bewildered minds, shot him 
through the heart from the cottage window. And there, in 
the dim light of their lantern, they found him, with the little 
note about his neck, all safe and dry, though his shaggy fur 
was dripping with muddy water from the creek and gullies 
through which he had made his way to them. One affection- 
ate glance of his great, pathetic eyes, he turned upon them, 
one shiver of pain passed througli his shaggy frame and he 
lay dead at their feet. 

It would take a Roberts or a Thompson Seton to do jus- 
tice to tragedies of this kind in the animal Avorld, though the 
commonness of them might furnish material for many a 
writer. The mad dog craze, or superstition as some deem 
it, lies at the bottom of many of them, as when in another 
instance a master brutally murdered a great noble New- 
foundland dog that had just pulled its boy playmate from 
a near-by stream and rushed home all wet and frothing from 
the effort, to bring the parents to the shore where their idol 
lay insensible. Leaping upon the mother in its eagerness, 
and trying to seize her garments and draw her to the door 
the father deemed it mad, and with a fearful blow from a 
club broke its skull. Yet the wounded creature managed to 
make the poor human maniacs understand his purpose and 
follow him to the spot where their little one lay in time to 
save him. And then, while they worked over the child, he 
crept off into the woods and died. 

There are no nobler instances of devotion and heroism 
to be found in all the annals of mankind than stories like 
this that roll up by the score in the dog's history. It fairly 
looks as though Stevenson might have gone farther than the 
fur, in declaring how to tell dog heroes and school heroes 



38 A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to Mankind 

iipart. But. the darkest feature in the case which the stu- 
dents of it unfold is the one which Nansen notes when he 
says that this common acceptance of the dog's life servicp 
and sacrifice tends to deaden all the better feelings in man. 
It is a principle which applies to more than the faithful 
dog in the animal kingdom. The growth of the humane 
societies, which bespeak protection for all our dumb rela- 
tions, from horses to birds and butterflies, is one of the 
most promising signs of tlie age, where human character is 
concerned. There is no question that the gentle, peaceful 
soul of the Oriental is closely- related to the tenderness to- 
ward all creatures great and small that his faith and philos- 
ophy inculcate. And yet the belief that "the soul of his 
grandam might haply inhabit a bird," as Shakespeare puts 
it, or the spirit of a lost love float past him on the wings 
of a butterfly, is no more reason for man's respect for these 
lesser creatures than the Occidental Christian teaching, that 
the spirit of the Great Creator breathes through every form 
of life his wonderful wide universe can show. 

Whoever gives even a passing stud}^ to the marvelous pro- 
visions that nature, "which is God," makes for the life and 
protection of the lower creatures, from the little green worm 
that matches its leafy coil, to the striped tiger that fits 
disguisinglj^ into the lights and shades of the jungle, must 
feel some measure of awe at the mysterious spirit of life and 
love visible everywhere. Thoreau tells us that the light in 
the young partridge's eye is something that never began 
with the bird, but declares itself co-eval with the eternal. 
Another writer notes how the shades of gray and ruddy 
brown of its plumage harmonize with the tints of its environ- 
ment and protect it from the shafts of the cruel hunter. 
Thus, is it, too, with the little brown thrush that hides itself 
in the thicket or hedge row, and 



A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to ManJcind 39 

Sings each song twice over, 

Lest you sliould think he never could recapture 

The first fine careless rapture. 

It is noted as a significant mark of our leaning to Ori- 
ental lines of thought and spirituality that this kindliness 
toward the animal creation grows more marked and general. 
It certainly does seem significant that, as in one case men- 
tioned, a business man of a busy Western city should turn 
aside from the call of trade to have a man arrested for 
"setting a bulldog on a poor little kitten" and that a muni- 
cipal court should fine him $50 for the act. But, indeed, the 
root of the matter lies far back of race lines or distinction 
in the better heart of humanity, and in that Eden dream of 
unity and love running through all creation, when the lion 
and the lamb shall lie down together and a little child shall 
lead them. 



THE PLACE OF THE HOME IN THE PLAN OF LIFE 

FOOLS build houses and wise men live in them," said 
some observing soul before the house-building associa- 
tions had tempted family men to reverse the proposition. 
Either way, however, it is wrong. Wise or foolish, to build 
your own house and live in it is the proper thing. Thus only 
can you fit it happily to all your follies, or adjust it to the 
nice requirement of your higher wisdom. Furthermore, thus 
only can you attach yourself to it in any way to make it 
other than a pile of brick and mortar, largely devised to 
tangle your steps and bruise your limbs at night and close 
about you with more or less prisonlike gloom by day. 

Of course, this supposes that you put something more 
than the raw material into the house 3'ou build ; and, indeed, 
you do, or you wouldn't build it at all. Plenty of heart 
and sentiment go into its construction, though you may 
scorn to admit it, and Gilder's exquisite poem, "How My 
Chimney Was Builded," will give you countenance for it all. 
It takes a little time, however, to resolve this part of the 
business to perfection, but when it is done your house will 
certainly stand for something not to be computed in dollars 
and cents. 

Well may the sage declare that "it is what is done and suf- 
fered in the house that has the profoundest interest for us," 
for, indeed, it is in "the familiar room" that love and death 
stand waiting to do their utmost, and the most beautiful ad- 
ventures of life are found. To break the tie and turn 
from the familiar room, with all its deep and sacred associa- 

40 



The Place of the Home in the Plan of Life 41 

tioiis, is no light thing, therefore, in human lives. Almost, as 
with the disrupting of ties of love and friendship, some "fair 
and honorable portion of existence falls away" and we be- 
come dislodged "from one of life's dear provinces." 

Hawthorne's picture of the man who turns his back on 
the human home and drops into mysterious disappearances 
from it, as becoming in the end an outcast of the universe, 
has a truth worth pondering in these days of shifting habi- 
tations and apartment houses, "with accommodations like a 
sleeping car," and as many stations for taking leave of them. 
The instability of all life and character follows naturally in 
the wake of such an existence, and the conditions of modern 
society are a glowing proof of it. Skyscrapers, that bear 
less relation to the sky than the hospitals, and "suite homes" 
that have no element of sweetness in them, fit marriages 
"made on a wager on a ferr}'^ boat," and a people whom the 
observing Arab sheikh declared are "always rushing madly 
to and fro as if a jaguar pursued them." He goes back to 
his skin tent in the desert or his hut in the forest, we are 
told, from his New York visit fully convinced that his way 
of living is the best. "Better the trees of the forest," he 
says, "than those tall buildings, which shut out the sun" ; and 
the problem that he carries with him is, "Why do men — - 
wealthy men, I am told — imprison themselves in those build- 
ings? Is that the way they were meant to live?" 

Thus does the dwelling house which Emerson declares the 
true index of the character of a people and the hope of a 
time convince the savage that we are "a nation of fools," 
and the only thing worth having at our hands is our mar- 
velous cannon whereby they may be able to keep out the 
rest of our civilization." And meantime the anthropological 
societies are playing into the hands of the savage by show- 
ing that the ancient pile dwelling was of so noble a character 



IJ^ '/'/(<• riacr of thr Home in the Plan of Life 

as 111 tiiniisli I 111' imxK'l tOr llu' IxMiuliful (Jrci-k loiupirs of 
classic iviu)wii. In (Jjh'cic ami nmiiv i)Uu>r parts of Iho 
world tluriiii»; the stoiio and bron/o a^vs they toll us "the 
oi'ioinal himian dwcllin*;' was a houso on piles, which also was 
the first (Iwcllini;- of the ii,()(ls, so that the worulcrful (irook 
temple, with its classic columns, is "a hig'hlv idealized and 
couveiitionali/ed expression of the oriivinal pile dwelling" of 
the [)oor barbarian whose ways we contemn. .lust when 
men be^-aii to let their houses oVrmaster them and become 
other than tlwelllno- [ilai'es of the ^ods of their truer bein^- 
it is not easy to say, but that they ha ye somehow made 
the blunder and reaped sorrow iji the path of it that poet 
seems to understand Avho writes of his young home builders: 

If now beyond or crib or cot 
Our house be grown, sure I know not 
\Vhy griefs sht>uld grow or pleasures pall 
Because the roof tree is so tall; 
Or hearts become less warm, Cu)d wot, 
For you and me. 

The eternal iitness of things no doubt has much to do 
with the general trouble, and indiyiduality in homes, as well 
as characters, would do much to relieye the situation. To 
devise his own habitation and cling to it while the tax asses- 
sors allow is therefore a point of wisdom in the case, despite 
the old ailage. Next to that there is something in choosing 
between the fool's house ami the wise mati's, however similar 
the exterior. There is certainly an aroma of being, as well 
as material points of con\fort and taste, that may tell in 
the long run upon the occupant. Perhaps the atmosphere 
of one deyil may not invite seven more devils to keep it com- 
pany, as in the ancient story, but thoughts that are things 
will somehow have impressed themselves upon the surround- 



The Place of the Home m the Plan, of Life 43 

iiigs. H, is vvliul we call Uk- hciKMJicUon of a pnjstaicr.', that 
ina_y linger longer tliari we know about the familiar spot. 

MucJi that is most wonderful and interesting in the whole 
njalrn of [)Hy(;hic phenorrK-na hears ijf)ori this Huhject. iMcri- 
tal impressions and intense thought that well-nigh reach 
visible form and action arc held to account for strange 
things in human houses. They stand back of the weird tales 
of haunting spirits that have so long clung to homes of 
tragedy and blood. How far they reach or just what laws 
govern them the psychical societies are still studying, and 
till they make it out it may be well to take the chances with 
the better thought forces even here, and add a new chapter 
to the "Saints' Rest," for the edification of those who seek 
promising abiding places even this side of the River Jordan. 

If ever we do reach the time when the rrn'nd becf)mes th(; 
sculptor and architect in the world of matter, the fools and 
wise men will have no trouble to keep themselves apart on the 
house proposition. (Certainly, too, an interesting unique- 
ness, instead of depressing conformity, will attach itself to 
that "dear liut our home" winch would more harmoniously 
coincide with nature's wise plan in fitting every creature in 
licr realm to its nest, from the green worm in its leafy bed 
to the chambered nautilus of the sea. Indeed, this building 
of its own stately mansions, to which Holmes invites the soul 
in his beautiful poem, may yet have more than poetic rela- 
tion to the human family, if it is to escape the effectual clos- 
ing in of the prison house of time to which society condemns 
man from his narrow-walled crib up. 

The lack of means that shuts the majority of mankind 
away from such elevating influences of S7)acious halls and 
noble domes is something that would be sore indeed if nature 
did not in a measure atone for it by offering lier skyey 
dome and woodland halls to prince and peasant alike who will 



44- The Placf of tin- Home in the Plan of Life 

seek her household tree. More thuu the Bedouin of the des- 
ert could euipluisi/.e nuin's folly in turning his buck upon his 
hirge ancestral inheritance here to cling- to his cribbed and 
cabined life in tenement rows of the city. To conspire with 
nature to secure a local liabitation and a name that shall 
not all belie hun is the only resource which the crushing 
fences of these days appear to allow the humbler builder. 
Yet vho privilege is a larger one than he realizes. As the 
poet tells him, "Thou shalt have the Avhole land for thy park 
and manor, the sea for thy bath. The woods and the rivers 
thou shalt own, and thou shalt possess that wherein others 
are only tenants and boarders." 

Thus may the poorest mortal find him a home "majes- 
tically dressed" and appointed, where sun and air and 
friendly soil shall do for him what all the architects and 
decorators of the proud cities could never approach. So 
wedded, indeed, are the cities and towns to their conventional 
and cramped apartments and suites that even a poet can 
not let his soul soar beyond them without accident to his 
best efforts. It is thoroughly characteristic of the time that 
when Ella Wheeler Wilcox undertook to put forth her sonnet 
with the significant line, "My soul is a lighthouse keeper,'" 
the up-to-date printer turned it out in his morning news- 
paper, ""^ly soul is a light housekeeper." 

As a case of more truth than poetry it is not to be sur- 
passed cither. That it sizes up the situation in many re- 
spects is pitifully true. The days are long gone when the 
modest young couple's domestic venture could fit the picture 
of Ik Marvels' dream, the more's the pity. "Your home, 
when it is entered, is just Avhat it sliould be, quiet, small, with 
everything she wishes and nothing more than she wishes. 
The sun strikes it in the happiest possible way ; the piano 
is the sweetest-toned in the world ; the librarv is stocked to 



The Place of the Home in the Plan of Life 45 

H chanii, and Mad^c, that blessed wife, is there, adorning 
and giving life to it all." The lover who has such a dream 
as that nowadays is advised that he ought never to marry, 
and he seems disposed to accept the advice. To love and 
then to part, or n^ieet in some "mutual friend's" mansion 
seems safer than to take tiie chances in the sixth-story flat 
with the money shark's lien on all the furniture. Nor is it 
love alone, hut life with all its chances and refinements, that 
goes out in the desolation of lodgings and light housekeeping 
that allows no lighthouse outlook for the soul. There is 
bitter truth, indeed, in the sarcasm of a modern novelist who 
says of his heroine, "When her relatives learned that she 
lived in lodgings and would probably need assistance if she 
were encouraged to dine out, they had the delicacy not to 
intrude upon her sorrow." 

Heredity and environment have kept the scholars busy in 
trying their rival claims in the cliaracter molding of the 
race, though the meaning of the home in the latter case 
has never been fully estimated. But that homes do likewise 
bear some impress of their occupants that poet certainly 
believes who gives us this neat characterization of it: 

Mrs. O'Hara has a house 

1'hat seem to say O ! O ! 

The blinds all off, the gate askew. 

Opening surprised big eyes at you. 

But Miss Diedamia's little cottage. 
Its mouth is thin and gray, 
And the closed shutters frown at you 
And murmur, Go away. 

Our house is pleasantest of all, 
With poppies down the walk, 
And hollyhocks that lean to you ; 



46 The Place of the Home in the Plan of Life 

The porch has arms that reach right out, 
And the knocker seems to talk. 

At twilight, when I hurry home, 
My dripping skates across my back, 
The twinkling windows smile at me 
And I smile back. 



THE FEAR OF LIFE AND ITS EVIL EFFECTS 

THE paradox of living which never knows life is not a 
new one in the story of man's wrestle with that "spangle 
of existence" allotted him here. Of late, however, the voice, 
without both temple and tavern, cries more insistently 
against the loss entailed by the closed door and man's com- 
plicity in it. 

You know how little while we have to stay, 
And once departed, may return no more, 

was the ancient appeal for the opened door, and now a grow- 
ing murmur against mortal cowardice that dares not force 
the lock is in all the air. 

"You are the dreams we do not dare to dream" is the 
gentle challenge of the poet, and a nation "afraid of life" is 
the bold charge of the critic, where the last chance to taste 
of life in all its freedom and fullness has been offered man- 
kind. 

With no more worlds to conquer, it is sad to read that 
Americans have missed their opportunity and through a 
"fear of life" involved themselves and their literature in a 
"labyrinth of gentle fancy, of wan emotion, of love without 
passion and faith without rapture." Especially sad, too, 
when some at least of their literary forefathers certainly 
started them out in the right path. Was it not "the prim- 
itive and enduring" that appealed to Thoreau, when he said : 
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, 

47 



48 The Fear of Life and Its Evil Effects 

to front only the essential facts of life. I wanted to live 
deep and suck out all the marrow of life." Was it not life 
in its very essence that Emerson considered when he said if 
man "plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there 
abide, the huge world will come around to him." 

Alas, when did American instincts grow too tame and 
domestic for any large world of life or literature to come 
round to them? For this you will note, far more than the 
cry of commercialism, is the sin against genius and force 
which the subtler critics lay at their door. The loss of 
"primal passions" in the free and primal atmosphere of a 
new world is something for which the children of light and 
literature find it hard to forgive them. To talk of "the 
stainless integrity of their private lives" in the face of 
tameness in their literature is more than pathetic and amus- 
ing to the elect of letters. It is like seeing a star go out in 
a new heaven prepared for it, and a tallow dip of modest 
home construction take the place of it. 

Naturally enough Puritanism, with its narrow creeds and 
forms and innumerable proprieties and, above all, its "New 
England conscience" was held largely responsible for it. For 
the majority of these broader critics appear to think, with 
Stevenson, that "the person, man or dog, who has a con- 
science is eternally condemned to some degree of humbug and 
the sense of law in their members precipitates them toward a 
frozen and affected bearing." The utmost "abandon of 
life" is the point insisted upon and that our greatest genius 
in fiction, Nathaniel Hawthorne, used the conscience motto 
for his intense and unparalleled probing at the heart of life 
is a phenomenon before which they confess themselves 
wrapped in wonder. 

Some Villon of the plains, some Balzac to record "the pas- 
sion of a desert" is what they demand and, lacking this, even 



The Fear of Life and Its Evil Effects 49 

Whitman, with his bold dash at the underside of things and 
3^earning for "the unanchored and driving free" did not lift 
us above the fear of life into the atmosphere of the immortals. 
The new world inheritance that brought neither a new pan- 
theism nor a new pain to interpret or augment the still sad 
music of humanity, nor yet a life free as the wild birds to 
defy all pain or fear, seemed a wasted splendor, a lost chance 
to recover for man the universal spirit, the universal joy. 
That Thoreau declared nature herself "vast, drear and in- 
human," not to be associated with man in any Wordsworth- 
ian S3'mpathy or tenderness, does not preclude the idea that 
somehow in the unprofaned deeps of the primeval forest or 
the vast solitude of the hills the American man should have 
come upon the "hidden deity" of elemental life who would 
relieve him of all his fears, and above all of his pestiferous 
conscience. 

That instead man settled down to puritan prayer meet- 
ings, blue laws and patient psalms of life is something for 
which the bohemian soul of genius and art can scarcely for- 
give him. And yet there may still be hope for him. If 
abandon to desire and defiance of troublesome laws lead the 
way to native force and passion a veritable Olympus may 
soon be set up in our midst. The only trouble is that by all 
the laws of art genius must know the way from the pit to 
the Empyrean, and a majoritj^ of those who go doAvn to test 
the tartarean shivers lose themselves in the operation, and 
thus leave the divine comedy of life but partially revealed 
to us. No wonder, either, when the very expression "aban- 
don of life" commonly carries with it some sinister idea of 
lawlessness in darker desires and passions, instead of the 
pure and enduring joys which ever lie at the heart of life. 
A lingering vision of the primitive lords of life and liberty 
faring forth to seize feudal castle or Sabine women as the 



50 The Fear of Life and Its Evil Effects 

native impulse seized them, goes still with this high theory 
of life's abandon. 

That the essence of life is divine, and the true fearlessness 
of life grows out of that truth, is something not dwelt upon 
by the majority of our critics. Yet here is the real potency 
of their demand for a brave facing of life, to the utmost, in 
the creature of force or genius, and their charge that a fear 
of life can pale all the fires of thought, being or achieving in 
any nation or individual. "Life means intensely and it 
means good," said one of the mightiest sons of genius who 
ever braved the sun and tried the stuff of life through every 
glint of gold or dross, the highest or the lowest phase of 
being could bring to it, and to fling one's self into the life 
current with that faith is to welcome the rough water as 
well as the smooth, and count every human experience worth 
all it cost — aye, cover the suffering and the sinning that 
are the eye-openers of the soul. "The unlit lamp and the 
ungirt loin," are the only deadly forms of fear such vision 
recognizes. To fear to battle for his soul's desire, his life's 
set prize, be it what it will, is the coward faltering at the 
heart of life, which blights and kills. It is not strange, 
either, that Browning places it in the domain of love, since 
love he held to be the grand prize of life, though one which 
mortal cowardice and weakness have most abused and for- 
feited. To dare to be true to love, when the world and its 
ways stood at all in the path of it, has apparently been given 
only to the great ones of the earth, while yet there is nothing 
surer than 

That to turn from love is life's one treason 
That treads down all the suns. 

There is a place where fear of life does more than im- 
poverish literature and a deeper cry than the artist's might 



The Fear of Life and Its Evil Effects 51 

well be raised against it. Of course, too, it is the perfect 
love that casteth out fear, which is to save us in the end, and 
it may be that the very upheavals of society in the line of 
divorce and marriage are on the search for it, although it 
is difficult to trace such end in either the life or literature of 
the hour. One thing is sure, however, and that is that it is 
not the poets and writers who drop us down in the mire of 
the strife, or carry us back to the brute instincts of crea- 
tion, and whisper "Here's life, be not afraid of it," who will 
purge us of our coward fears. "Half dust," but also "half 
deity," life's life only as it includes the divine. 

Live for eternity as well as time, and the fearlessness and 
joy of the "perfect round" is assured to you. Especially if 
you do not try to reverse the method and stake all of eternity 
upon an hour of time ; nor yet like Atlas to carry the world 
on your shoulders in the wrestle with time. You can smile 
at one man's failure, even your own, if sure that another 
hand will tfring the desired victor3\ "Atlas was just a gen- 
tleman with a protracted nightmare," says Stevenson, and 
so is any single individual who "coddles himself into the 
fancy that his own work is of exceptional importance" and 
fears life's utmost ability to carry it on to any worthy end 
without him. Indeed, the dignity and grandeur of life in 
its far-reaching ends and fulfillments is something that glori- 
fies every participant in it, and, though we are in a measure 
novices and "vagabonds in the great universe of power," yet 
there is nothing to fear, since history and science alike show 
us that "our little wherry is taken in tow by the ship of 
the Great Admiral, who knows the way and has the force 
to draw men and states and planets to their good." 

The primal passions to which the critics look for any 
strength in life or genius were lit at the divine fire of being, 
and the white flame at that altar needs no taint of any lower 



52 The Fear of Life and Its Evil Effects 

life to give it force. The "stainless integrity of a private 
life" ought not to militate against the fiercest fires of genius, 
and if it seems to it must be because the world and the critics 
have not yet discovered what stainless integrity in human 
life and relations means. We may grant them frankly that 
it does not mean "the mildl}'^ domestic" nor conventionally 
proper, but even then a white margin is left for the high 
passions to disport themselves in, which Dante knew, but 
minor writers have lost entirel3^ 

Who will restore to us the lost clew, who will give us the 
"Vita Nuova" which shall trace life and love to their in- 
tensest emotions, yet leave the celestial skies of Eden inno- 
cence and purit}^ enfolding them both? The lion of love is 
hardly a fit animal for a domestic pet, the modern writers tell 
us, and the social records seem to sustain them, but what 
better they do with him in turning him loose in the company 
now sought for him, it is not becoming to consider. Some 
Dante or Browning to reinstate love on his own high throne 
is a prime need of society, and then the life philosopher may 
more safel}' say to us with Fichte, "What thou lovest thou 
livest." Perhaps the fear of life will drop away, even from 
strait-laced America, and, without the asset of broken hearts 
or broken morals, our poets maA' retrieve their lost inher- 
itance, and be able yet to tell the new world's story of 

A life intense, 

Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, 

But hath a part of being. ' 

Yet, if the critics fail to "get their money's worth of life" 
out of the epic story, there is still a whisper from the last 
rim of the golden west, that "we are caught in the coil of 
a god's romance," and must wait the sequel from afar. 



THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE FORCES IN 
THE GAME OF LIFE 

LIFE as a game, death as an adventure, Is a philosoph- 
ical wa}^ of taking the whole "scheme incomprehensible," 
which puzzled humanity more and more inclines to. One of 
the latest books dealing with the eternal mystery calls death 
"the great adventure," and pictures the fearless and eager 
interest whicli a perfectly wholesome nature might take in 
it from such a viewpoint. The idea is not a new one, either, 
though elaborated in an unusual way. More people than 
the writers know have faced death in the spirit of the beloved 
Uncle Remus, who only whispered, "I have always been curi- 
ous to know what was on the other side," as he passed over 
with a gentle smile into the face of his wife. Attempts to 
solve the mystery, either on the part of science or religion, 
have tended directly to cloud this pleasing speculation in 
it without in any way lifting the veil that obscured it. In 
general they are of a character best illustrated by the story 
of the two men each of whom was asked as to the existence 
of hell. The first man being a plain unlettered sort of per- 
son, simply answered, "I don't know," and was promptly set 
down as an agnostic, a heretic and a dangerous individual. 
The other, who was high of brow, wrote out his answer in 
full. He took 5000 words to introduce his subject and then 
70,000 words to tell what the first man had told in three, 
and he was hailed as a philosopher, an uplifter, and a leader. 
To air their supposed wisdom or their doctrine is about all 
the would-be-teachers in this unknown realm can do, and 

53 



54- Visible and Invisible Forces in Game of Life 

that it leaves the matter about as it found it is as true to-day 
as when the Persian poet tells us "I heard the great argu- 
ment" of doctor and saint, about it and about — but, ever- 
more, "came out by tiie same door wherein I went." 

From tirst to last life is a riddle and guessing at the riddle 
is a large part of the entertainment it offers. That death 
changes this order of things and solves all life's puzzles in 
some fixed state either of bliss or woe, is a view of the great 
change accepted by many, but more or less appalling to all, 
and wholly unwarranted by any logic of happy being known 
on earth. That it will take ages on ages to find out what "lies 
on the other side" is more probabl}^ the truth of the busi- 
ness if we are not all to drop into some stagnant pool or 
monotonous plane of existence where no blaze of eternal 
glory could atone for tlie interest and zest of the game we 
have left behind us on the uncertain earth. That "man is 
hurled from change to change, his soul's wings never furled" 
or sure of the next peak to be reached, is the more cheering 
view of the situation that progressive spirits like Browning 
take of it. The main difference there and here may be that 
the eternal wonder as to how anything is "going to turn 
out" will be accompanied by some sustaining sense that it 
will turn out all right. The difficulty of lajang hold of that 
comforting assurance in this crooked world, is what hurts 
the game, although it may give it a kind of desperate zest 
the good angels know nothing about. It is possible, how- 
ever, to put a certain faith in what men call destiny, that 
will give one boldness and indeed delight in playing the 
game of life even when it goes against him. In his defini- 
tion of romance a recent writer brings out this point in a 
significant manner. "Romance," he saj^s, "is a chain of cir- 
cumstances which out of the infinite chaos links two living 
things together for a definite end — that end, which is a 



Visible mul Invisible Forces in dame of Life 55 

pendant upon the chain itself, and may be a heart with a 
lock of hair inside, or a cross or a dagger or a crown. But 
whatever it is you may know that end was meant to be and 
for a very good reason." 

This knowledge that you are in the hands of destiny 
"gives you boldness." It carries a sense that you are meant 
to meet the people and circumstances that come in your path, 
and hence are not acting entirely of your own puny self in 
taking the preposterous steps and chances that your bold 
encounter with them might seem to imply. Of course this 
is little more than that faith in the ultimate good and man's 
appointed part in it, which saints as well as philosophers 
have been recommending through all ages. But, resolving 
the whole business into a romance, filling it with the "rigors 
of the game," is not commonly a part of the philosophic plan, 
nor yet the theologic, although to be sure Bunyan did send 
his pilgrims out with something of the zest for a fray, and 
the Sir Galahads of righteous renown have played a thrilling 
part in the pages of life and literature. But in fact, it is 
the Young Lochinvars of little thought beyond their own 
prowess and romantic desires, who find the battle and the 
game of life most zestful, while those who dwell upon the 
paradise to come or "heed the rumble of a distant drum" 
very shortly fall out of the enjoyment of the game and con- 
sequently bear no very effective part in it. This, of course, 
is why observing souls have proposed to drop them, saints 
and sinners alike, out of the earthly being and leave only 
those young spirits that could keep the zest of the game, 
the romance of the unexpected, whether good or bad, alive 
in the human arena. 

It may be directly in the interests of these that life, as 
an endless adventure, is the livelier note sounded from pulpit 
as well as lecture halls, and the soothing doctrine of under- 



56 Visible and Invisible Forces in Game of Life 

lying good directs itself more to the race than the individual 
who is left to play the cards or weapons dealt out to him 
with the old uncertainty whether he is to win or lose in the 
present battle. That there is always a chance to win on 
the Lord's side is the standing encouragement held out to 
him though he may see many an Apolyon carry off the vic- 
tory in single combat. While success or failure in any field 
depends still upon circumstances that "may leap out of 
infinite chaos," neither the doctrine of the ultimate good, nor 
the pleasing idea of the master man, can destroy the element 
of chance the situation holds and the real interest of the 
game demands. And as all this exists as truly in age as 
youth, with a world of unexplored chances and prizes within 
it, it is certainly strange that the spirit of adventure so soon 
dies out in human breasts. To rouse it to fresh life, and 
carry it even beyond the shadowy pall of death, is a prime 
step in the modern movement to turn back the powers of 
darkness and despair that have so long spoiled the wonder 
game of life for all beyond the earliest stages of it. 

"Getting old is not a necessity. It is merely a bad 
habit," says Ellen Key, and the worst of the habit lies in 
the acceptance of the old idea that there comes a time when 
life has nothing more to offer and memory of the past must 
take the place of eager hope in the future. No wonder that 
life grows "weary, stale, flat and unprofitable," to those 
who fall out thus weakly in any stage of the game. "Oh, 
the brief and unctuous self-confidence of those who have not 
yet found out," says one cynic in the face of youth's glowing 
assurance. But oh, the self-destroying assurance of those 
who think they have found out, arid hold dead sea apples 
the fruit of life's tree. The boy will never become truly 
father to the man till aU the radiant faith and hope in the 
unknown world before him remains a potent force and charm 



Visible mid Invisible Forces in Game of Life 57 

of age as of happy youth. A "boy who keeps on growing" 
in a world that keeps on offering the wonderful and unex- 
pected at every stage, is what the ideal human being must 
be to fulfill the life of adventure prepared for him. A 
world that is "all gates, all opportunities, strings of ten- 
sion waiting to be struck," need never grow stale and unpro- 
fitable to any being upon its shores nor can the oldest or the 
youngest of its explorers ever tell what hour a new conti- 
nent may loom on its horizon, or a Halley*s comet flame 
into view that shall blazon his name in the splendors of im- 
mortal 3"outh upon the shining sky. The testimony of Victor 
Hugo is the one most gloriously in point for those who would 
secure life from the drear sentence too often pronounced 
upon it as a tale that is told^ "Winter is on my head," he 
writes, "but spring is in my heart. I breathe at this hour, 
the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets and the roses, as at 
twenty years, the earth gives me its generous sap, and 
heaven lights me with the reflection of unknown worlds. It is 
marvelous, yet simple. It is a fairy tale and it is history." 
That forces of good and evil battle together in this fairy 
tale of life and adventure honest thinkers like Hugo have 
been fain to admit, and that man's place in the giant play 
of these invisible forces is a precarious and uncertain one. 
But the improvement the Christian philosopher made upon 
the pagan one, was in the larger faith in the good than the 
evil power at the back of the game. It increased that bold- 
ness in the player which the novelist submits is essential to 
the romance of life, as well as the courageous encounter with 
it where little romance seems left. The stoicism of the pagan 
as against the faith of the Christian is well symbolized in 
the contrast between the sphinx of destiny and the god of 
love, at the back of the two different systems. An invisible 
and inscrutable power controlling the field, however man 



oS Vhiblf and Im'isihlt' Fonts in (itniw of Life 

handloil his forces, was an aikuowledged point in both cases, 
but it • made a ditt'erence whether ruthless fate or loving 
purpose was behind that power. The pleasure in the life 
irame could only come with the full consciousness tluvt no 
mere demon of ill or stern fatality held the stakes, or dealt 
the cards, but one who meant fair play and endless chance 
for ever}' participator in the game. It is only thus that 
the odds of any game can be taken with zest and pleasure. 
Loaded dice soon doovu a game, but the uncertain turn of 
the honest dice gives all the interest to it. "The uncertain 
factors of success, the entrance of accidents, the intrusion of 
the unforeseen make life worth living," says one advocate 
of the scheme of things about us. Bvit it took a large faith 
in the being who holds the balance of the unforeseen to con- 
vince him of this. 

It is a significant feature in the new theology and the 
new psychology that luck and providence are becoming 
closely united. The visible and invisible forces in the game 
of life are coming into more intelligible relations to each 
other. ^Mental science is taking a strong hand in the game. 
That man "is one with life's almighty source," is a truth of 
the ages that is rendering the ancient' chance more marvel- 
ously sweet and alluring. Life is an endless adventure, a 
voyage of discovery in which "good luck" and "God speed" 
are kin notes the best of the preachers combine in their 
"shouts of cheer" to the voyagers. "The devil for luck" is 
a lost note in the game. Man's own vision has outstretched 
that stake, and writes the distance from it in the poet's lines 
for the years calendar. 

Enough to know of chance and luck. 
The stroke we choose to strike is strvick; 
The deed we slight will slighted be, 
In spite of all necessity. 



Vixihle aii/l Invinihle ForceH in (iarae of fAfe 59 

Alun'h fn.e will and a loving (jOcJ'k Kovc-rcignly arc work- 
ing out the problem of life along more glorious lines thafi 
the v/'divrmf^ theologians over the seemingly conflicting doc- 
trines ever dreamed of. 



ABOUT HEROES 

THERE is no comfort after all in trjang to dispose of 
the historic heroes who bestride the world to the em- 
barrassment of smaller men, unless we can be sure that the 
legendary ones will not push into the ranks of veritable his- 
tory to take their places. No sooner have we relieved our- 
selves of Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington and "ze great 
Christopher Columbo" than up leaps Hiawatha as the veri- 
table father, not of one, but six nations, and possessed of all 
the sublime virtues of which our own illustrious fathers have 
been denuded by the writers. It is fair to state that it is 
the restless German intellect, not the American, that has 
done this. Longfellow knew enough to meet the question. 
"Whence these stories, whence these legends and traditions," 
with the "misty odors of the forest" and the whisperings of 
the west wind. It is a German scholar deep in the mysteries 
of ethnology and anthropology who has tracked them to 
the remnant of the Onondagas and learned from the lips of 
the old chief at their New York reservation the veritable 
story upon which they are founded. This settles it for 
Hiawatha, and the beauty of the verification is that not a 
virtue or a grace which the finest fancy of the romancer 
could weave about him is lost in the reality. 

From the hour when he took the fair Minnehaha from 
the tribe of the Mohawks to the day when he broke from his 
long mourning for her loss, to meet the call of his people and 
fix the totem pole for the clans, not a breath of wrong or 
reproach stained the glory of this "plumed knight" or chief 

60 



About Heroes 61 

of American history. True to one affection and one pure 
purpose of uplifting his people, he buried the sorrow of his 
life in his bosom, and having bound the confederacy to keep 
in his absence the constitution he had framed for them, dis- 
appeared, like the old Greek patriot and lawmaker, to return 
no more. "In the glory of the sunset; in the purple mists 
of evening," verily did his white canoe vanish from the strain- 
ing eyes of the tribes, and here we are up against a hero 
whom no probing of the story can besmirch. More than 
that to the white man is the moral and to civilization the 
reproach. Could any of "them" prying scholars and "fool 
literary fellers" do worse for us than that.'' Would that 
Owen Seaman would spear them all with a jest, and let us 
have white lambs for heroes that are not quite so "ominous" 
when served up with the mint sauce of present society. 

Nevertheless, since philosophy seems to insist that all our 
ideas are born of experience and no conception of life or 
character beyond the range of experience is possible to the 
mind, we may have to take all the aureoled heroes of song 
and story as men and brothers yet. There is no denying, 
either, that when we do come upon them in the ranks of com- 
mon life the}' surpass anything that the romancers have 
ever claimed for them. We can afford to lose all the Norse 
heroes of fiction, whom John Fiske's searching work, "New 
France and New England," wipes out in the glory of those 
humble men and maidens of authentic history' that he raises 
up to stem the tide of savagery, tyranny, superstition and 
wrong in the new land. What are a hundred Jeannie Deans, 
either, besides the almost unknown woman, Mary Easty, who 
faced ail the powers of court and clergy in a trial for witch- 
craft with protestations of its falseness, and the dying 
prayer, "I petition not to your honors for my own life, for I 
know I must die. But by my own innocency I know you 



62 About Heroes 

are in the wrong way." There are heroic souls and exalted 
spirits enough in real life to make us uneasy in our vanities, 
without going to fiction for them. The only thing we can 
ask of the searchers after their types or prototypes, is that 
they shall not be thrust upon us too ruthlessly before we are 
able to bear them. It was a solid comfort to know that the 
new Enoch Arden of Meriden, Conn., who recently came from 
the Klondike to gaze silently through the garden gate upon 
the fair wife Annie, who, believing him dead, was playing 
"little wife" to another, went way back to Alaska and sat 
down, without upsetting the gracefully shifting currents of 
love and matrimony of our day. And what if he did hear 
his baby boy calling another "papa .?" There is a good Eng- 
lishman not unknown to society who always tells his wife 
that in case of the "divided path of development" she can 
have both the boys to dispose of as she pleases. Enoch 
Arden should know that in these days love 

Fulfills itself in many ways 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 

It is only when some fierce Zola rises up to cry, "I accuse," 
to the ruling orders that trouble arises, and even then small 
harm is done unless he dies and shows them a white-souled 
hero of truth and justice at the back of it. It is these just 
men everywhere that disturb the dreams of kings, and when 
society has spent ages in banishing them, and literature in 
painting their weaknesses, why should restless anthropolo- 
gists hunt legends and archives to reinstate them on the face 
of the earth, especially when it remands us back to a state 
of nature or savages to find them.? "These people are can- 
nibals," said Zola of the representatives of French aris- 
tocracy and intellect, who crowded the courtroom to ring 
out their cheers over the base verdict, "Guilty." But, of 



About Heroes 63 

course, any poor, ignorant cannibal who merely gratifies 
his appetite for dinner might blush to find himself ranged 
beside these cultured monsters, athirst for lives, honor and 
every human principle of decency or justice. It is the 
growth in power and intellect without a corresponding 
growth in goodness and truth that is the reproach of civi- 
lization everywhere, and the thing that makes it almost an 
appalling matter to have some white embodiment of all its 
own ideals step out of the dim past and very ranks of sav- 
agery to try its progress along the eternal lines. 

However, there is still a chance for us, for has not the 
well-known president of a voters' league recently declared 
that he would not indorse the Angel Gabriel if he were not 
on the winning ticket, and it has never been the part of these 
ideal creatures to get themselves on the winning ticket. To 
all appearances they only become our snow-white heroes 
when they are dead and well out of the way. If they can not 
attach themselves to earth by a few weaknesses while they 
live, society generally takes up the matter and fits them out 
with a saving panoply of sins and accusations if it pro- 
poses to make any use of them. It is more than possible that 
if truth were told there are heroes of true and honest pur- 
pose among us to-day. But let them start out to do an 
unusual and earnest work, and see what hints of evil and 
all duplicity will be brought to bear upon them. That gen- 
tle-souled Walt Whitman may have intended no sarcasm 
when he declared that it is only after the "noble inventors" 
that the sons of God may come upon the earth singing his 
songs. But he perpetrated a rather neat one, notwithstand- 
ing, and perhaps it is not till we have lost these noble in- 
ventors of dusky earth garments for our heroes that we need 
be very much afraid that we shall have to creep under their 
huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable 



64 About Heroes 

graves, but to be able to speak with the assurance of Brown- 
mg of "My peers the heroes of old" would certainly be an 
agreeable thing to any man if he could reconcile the world 
to it. Many and varied counsels thereto have been offered 
him also, from Byron's advice that the hero must drink 
bra'T.dy to the modern diplomat's insistence that, like Janus, 
he must have two faces. But perhaps that discerning old 
jssayist, Addison, comes nearest to the case when he declares 
simply that he must know how to make both the hero and 
the man complete. 



THE PURSUIT OF GHOSTS 

PURELY by accident the psychic societies captured a 
ghost. An uncapped lens of a camera, left in the de- 
serted library of an old English manor house, revealed on 
tlie developed negative the veritable figure of the lord of the 
manor seated in a high-backed chair of the ancient sanctum. 
And this at the very hour when the body of said lord was 
being laid away in a kirkyard near by. 

Of course, the society for psychic research took care of 
the mystery, and the poets and seers who stand harking 
with spirit ear at the door of the arcanum advised us not to 
be cast down by such mystery; or marvel, but to "go right 
on." Joining hands with science, they whispered stoutly, 
"Let us recognize that mystery of this kind exists, but until 
it reveal itself we have not the right to relax our efforts nor 
cast down our eyes and resign ourselves to silence." The 
aim of all men should be to master the forces of matter and 
wrest from them their secret, and then go on to that gen- 
eral secret of all life which "lies hidden at the end." The 
fact that science has become hospitable to a ghost and set 
upon taking its photograph is directly in the line of their 
counsel, even though the unbelieving are out with cameras 
and confederates trying to show by what neat tricks and 
accidents the filmy ghosts may be developed. 

There was a time when the wondrous feats of the Indian 
fakirs were submitted slyly to the tests of the camera, and 
the trees and flowers and dancing angels which they claimed 
to bring straight from paradise or some deeps of the un- 

65 



66 The Pursuit of Ghosts 

known would make no impression on its plates. Hence they 
were not there, said the savants, and meant simply an op- 
tical illusion produced by the magicians, and on the strength 
of this dictum the value of the camera in catching creatures 
or things that were there has been on the increase. No 
freaks of the imagination or nerve disorders could deceive 
this calm "e3^e of science," it was said, and the veritable 
figure of a dead or absent lord on the sensitive plate of an 
open camera in his deserted library must mean something 
of that lord's ability to transport himself about, indepen- 
dent of his body. Barring the chance of some sly page or 
butler slipping in to assist a materialized spirit to the lord's 
oak chair, one would say that it must. And just for this 
reason it may be well to take the advice of the higher lights 
and go straight on spiritualizing ourselves with a view to 
getting thus at the truth of the matter, however science may 
hobble along either with or without us. It must be easier 
for spirit to discern spirit than for the lens of a camera to 
catch up with one, and if a respectable dead man will go 
and sit down with a photographic apparatus there may be 
no reason why he would not associate with any of the least 
of us if we would give him proper encouragement. 

The dullness with which the second centur}^ man looked 
into the infinite deep of heaven with all the starry realms of 
being and deemed it but a pretty tinted cover for his flat 
earth, was slight beside the stupid blindness in which we 
walk among the invisible forces of creation, and powers that 
sway us on every hand in the practical belief that we are 
the only quickened spirits in the illimitable space. That 
every drop of water or atom of matter is aglow with invis- 
ible life science declares to us, but that the highest form 
of life, the spirit life, is everywhere we are loth to believe, 
because science has not adjusted its lens to capture it. As 



The Pursuit of Ghosts 67 

Avell might wc declare that there is no melody in the forest 
nor music in the spheres, because the human ear can follow 
but to a certain point those vibrations of sound, which yet 
go on and on in divinist harmony through all creation's 
bounds. To listen with "soul, not ear," and catch the "quir- 
ing to the young-eyed cherubims," as the poet catches it 
through spirit sympathetics, is the thing the seers and sing- 
ers of all ages have taught us, and yet we wait for some 
advance of material science to convince us that there are 
spirits touching us at every corner. 

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall sec God," 
said the Lord of Spirits, and that appears to be all there 
is of it ; and no time, nor condition is set to the achievement 
of that purity and sight. Moses, Socrates, Buddha, may 
all have compassed it, as the tales record, and any living 
creature who could bring himself to that pure, transparent 
atmosphere of the unstained spirit, could no doubt walk witli 
God and the angels, whether in the body or out of the body. 
It is in such hours of spirit exaltation that the good and 
gifted ones of all ages have believed that they broke through 
the bars of sense and held communion with celestial beings, 
or with the souls of their beloved dead. And whether their 
belief is assured or not, at least there is enough in it to point 
the conclusion that it is along this spirit line that our best 
hope comes. 

Speak to him, for he hears you. 
And spirit with spirit may meet, 

says Tennyson, and there is little doubt that Avith that 
faith and understanding the communion of spirits, whether 
visible or invisible, ought not be difficult to establish. 
Everything in the universe has its own medium of life and 
communication, and innocence and trust may be more en- 



68 TJie Fursuit of Ghosts 

ticing to spirits than all the scientific courtesies of tlic 
schools. Poets like Shelley and Wordswortli have believed 
that sweet and guileless infancy holds long a close and glad 
relation to the angels, ere the "shades of the prison house 
begin to close about the growing boy," and it may be that 
here, as elsewhere, it is tlic little child who can best show us 
the way into the kingdom. 

A pretty story of one of these little ones comes from a 
fair suburban home not far away. Two children, John and 
Mary, were born to that home, and, as the old poet has it, 
"grew in beauty side by side," while all nature bower- 
gownied and blossomed about them and filled their souls with 
its joy. Cultured Christian parents nurtured them and a 
little leaf-embowered church and Sunday school gathered 
them in for wondrous stories of heaven and the angels. But 
one sad da}^ a shadow fell across the threshold and in the 
wake of it Mary slipped away to another countr3\ The 
parents mourned her as dead, but Johnny, who had been 
told that she was an angel, went out under the spreading 
elm where they had been wont to play together to find out 
about it. And there, shortly, his mother found him, in 
great joy, pla3'ing, as he insisted, with the little sister who 
had come when he called her and promised to be his play- 
mate still. For days and weeks he plaj'ed about the old 
haunts, or rambled through the woods in the avowed com- 
panionship of the departed sister, and the astonished par- 
ents, who watched him curiously, found him talking, laugh- 
ing and sporting gleefulh' as Avith some visible playmate. 
He did not die, nor go into a fever, nor develop any of the 
brain diseases nor eccentricities that science might have ex- 
pected of him. But one day he came in sadly and told his 
mother that Mary had gone away and could not come to 
play with him any more. 



The Pursuit of Ghosts 69 

Of course tlie ]).sycliioa] societies make short work of such 
cases, and there may be plenty of them among the imagina- 
tive children of the land. But, after all, in their trusting 
simplicity, tliey come perhaps as near to the spirit truths 
in the matter as "the obstinate questionings" and "blank 
misgivings" of older creatures, "moving about in worlds not 
realized." 



A FEATURE OF THE HOUR 

THE literary man in politics is a feature of the hour. 
Not that he is a new figure there, but rather that he is 
not. It is the change of front that counts. The blot on a 
Dryden's genius and the national star on a Lowell's is the 
measure of that change. It is the difference between cower- 
ing and commanding, leading and being led, and in days past, 
even John Milton himself was not free from the spoiler's 
touch. The poet in exile and the poet in a President's cab- 
inet points the progress of the world in the direction of the 
literary statesman and politician, and republican Amer- 
ica clearly keeps up with the procession. Poets and ro- 
mancers, playwrights and fable makers are in high demand 
as legislative candidates and members of Congress, and even 
law, medicine and pedagogics are hunting the man who 
knows how to keep romance alive in his heart. 

Nobody questions that this may be tlie way of refresh- 
ment for murky politics and musty law. To have the 
guardians of the central fires let in to their courts and cau- 
cuses must inevitably do something to warm and refine their 
paling altars. But for the high priests, or priestesses, of 
the sacred flame, themselves, what of them? Are they to 
keep their souls alive and fed at the ward meeting, or the 
boodler trial, or find an influx of the divine afflatus in the 
trooping stream of applicants at ambassador's or execu- 
tive's door. Alas, every peaceful spring of Helicon, or 
"many fountained Ida" cries out against such sacrilege, and 

70 



A Feature of the Hour 71 

the vision of Charles Lamb in the counting room rises up to 
decry it. 

If the country has really come to feel the need of the lit- 
erary man's influence in society and state, why not give him 
the chance to speak the truth that is within him in his own 
wa}^? If he is to be a support to the government in such 
work why not allow him the recognition and remuneration 
of a servant of the government that he may keep his sa- 
cred office quite apart from the sordid question of popular 
taste and market value in the word he utters? The his- 
tory of all literature is the history of the world's neglect 
and stupidity in this direction. The effort to restore the 
Poe cottage at Fordham, N. Y., recalled some of our grand 
sinning here. Picture our greatest American poet sitting 
shivering by that bed of straw, where his young wife lay 
dying, with only the coat he had torn from his back for her 
covering. And Sidney Lanier, that divine master of song 
and lute, how did his life go out in suff^ering and want, to 
the eternal loss of American literature, while publishers 
were printing books that would sell, or bringing out war 
ditties that perished with the occasion. 

Dr. Johnson writing "Rasselas" to pay for his mother's 
funeral, Dante learning in want and exile how bitter it was 
to climb another's stairs, Carlyle half starving on bread and 
porridge at Craigenputtock, these are but a few of the 
authors' woes that point the world's nice care of her best 
writers. And, although to-day the author with his piling 
editions can scarcely pose as a mendicant or consumer of 
the midnight oil, yet it is doubtful if the live connection 
between bread and glory, truth and the day's living, can be 
much more happily effected. Truth may be, in a vague way, 
what the world wants, but the inner observer who writes that 



'F 



A Feature of the Hour 



it is truth "toned down, diluted, conventionalized, trimmed," 
probably knows what he is talking about. 

To make the writer totally independent of the world's 
passing whims and pleasure is the only way, therefore, to 
enable him to minister to its fundamental and eternal needs. 
And, as dead men can tell no tales, even to publishers, some 
author's fund or government pay to enable the author, as 
well as the state's attorney, to stand by truth and justice 
and the higher things of life without starving for it, is a 
clear necessity in the case. 

It will be a very different world from what it is now when 
our Whitmans and our Emersons, our truest "conservators 
of the vestal fire" anywhere in literature, will stand much 
show among ward politicians and Tammany chiefs, and even 
our successful literary statesmen and executives have been 
more or less obliged to abandon the "higher calling" in en- 
tering upon the public and political life. If then it is true 
that it is through the author, the poet, that "all men see," 
is not something lost to us when his high office is sacrificed 
to any other, and should not the note of true progress and 
enlightenment in modern life reveal itself, not in sinking 
him in the politician, but in lifting him so eff^ectively into 
the freedom and greatness of his own work that the poli- 
tician's glories would have small attraction for him? It 
meant something for the higher humanity M^hen the son of 
our beloved poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, stood up at a 
Western university and declared to teacher and student 
alike, that the glory of the ideal, "the joy of eternal pur- 
suit" could run like a romantic passion through every 
branch of their work or study, that neither law nor medi- 
cine, nor any known profession need be "commonplace," 
while the romance of the unachieved, the passion for the 
ideal, burned within them. But was it not very much the 



A Feature of the Hour 73 

fine fruition of the New England poet's thought coming 
down to us as a divine inheritance? And how would it have 
fared with the whole of that rich inheritance if joung Oliver 
Wendell Holmes had given himself to politics and the anti- 
slavery movement in the formative period of his life, as his 
abolitionist friends so clamorously demanded? Indeed, his 
interesting letter to James Russell Lowell explaining his 
principles on the subject is the significant answer to the 
whole matter, and one which the keepers of the sacred fires 
would do well to ponder before taking the stump or casting 
in their lot too effectually with the politicians. However, 
the gods do sometimes interpose to save their own, and it 
may be that Booth Tarkington's stage fright was a special 
evidence of their care. Certainly if it comes again he should 
take it for a sign. 



OUR DUMB RELATIONS 

WHAT is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild 
fowl?" asks a Twelfth Night philosopher. "That 
the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird," re- 
plies another. Times have changed since the age of 
Pythagoras, yet to-day, whatever we may think of our 
grandams, we have lost no respect for wild fowl. It is not 
probable that the ancient doctrine of metempsychosis will 
be revived, but certainly if the glorification of animals goes 
much farther it will no longer be open to theologians to dis- 
miss the question of the immortality of brutes as "invidi- 
ous." Indeed, Bishop Butler himself scarcely does that, 
although Goldwin Smith so interprets him, for he admits, 
negatively at least, that there may be something in the 
brute which, along his line of argument, might come in for 
immortality, but that the question can in no way militate 
against the immortality of man. 

However, the animal lovers of to-day would more and 
more confound the theologian, for it is not alone the brute 
instinct or lower order of intelligence they are finding in 
them, but the higher moral qualities. Maeterlinck has just 
shown us in the insect world the highest type of that altru- 
ism, which is held the basis of all morality, in the unswerv- 
ing devotion of the bee to the good of the community, and 
the annual sacrifice it makes of all its years of toils and 
gains to the next generation. "The act," he submits, "be 
it conscious or not, undoubtedly passes the limit of human 
morality." Spiders, which we are told, are properly 

74 



Our Dumb Relations 75 

classed as animals, are making themselves interesting to sci- 
ence through what one writer calls the "personal bravery" 
of their courtships, which always includes the probability of 
being pounced upon by the scornful female and devoured 
alive. Turtles, in the laboratory at Harvard, are evincing 
perceptive faculties that are higlily wise, if not otherwise 
moral, and beyond everything else the noble dog has come 
into the kingdom, and, in the "person" of the beloved 
"Pluto" of Chicago, been honored, solely for his virtues, 
with as distinguished a funeral as the prominent citizens of 
three suburban villages could turn out. 

Truly none can liereafter deny immortality to brutes, and 
it only remains for devout worshipers of their superiority 
to get out litanies and rituals in their service, as even the 
best efforts of village clerks and society leaders do not seem 
quite up to the mark. For really it does seem a little with 
these gentle creatures of field and forest, as Socrates said of 
women, that "once made our equals they become our superi- 
ors. If they really have souls to know the wrongs and 
burdens put upon them and the irony of our small human 
mastery over them, and yet carry themselves with that meek, 
patient and cheery spirit toward all creation which the do- 
mestic animals disclose, they certainly are so much greater 
than we that we might well set them up in our temples and 
prepare to do them reverence. 

The main trouble seems to be that we have about as mixed 
ideas concerning the real virtues of birds and beasts as we 
ever show regarding our own, and if the new teachers of 
the animal school are right the old ones are altogether 
wrong. Here is Maeterlinck telling us that an unconscious 
act of the bee can exceed the limit of human morality, thus 
sweeping morals quite out of the field of intelligent responsi- 
bilitv. Brave Pluto was honored in his death because he 



76 Owr Dumb delations 

was never known to bite a human being. The dogs tliat de- 
light to bark and bite are now out of the ring, although the 
excellent Watts has assured us that "God hath made them 
so," and for a purpose we know that some worthy watch 
dogs have turned to good account. Science even justifies 
Dr. Watts in saying, "Let bears and lions growl and fight ; 
for it is their nature to," and the great law of the survival 
of the fittest is conserved thereby. Nevertheless, in the fond 
efforts to fit them out with human virtues pet bears and 
other wild animals are often taken into family circles or 
naturalists' camps, and then summarily executed when they 
eat up the small children within reach, though it is their 
nature to. Even dogs and cats suffer no end of violence 
through being expected to live up to the human standard of 
domestic virtues, to say nothing of the violence they inflict 
on their teachers. An Irish setter that had been extrava- 
gantly petted by its mistress recently undertook to drown 
a new baby that was supplanting him in her affections, and 
was promptly shot by his owner for his misguided affection. 
To live out its true nature, to fulfill the ends of its own 
being, which Spinoza makes the highest virtue of dogs or 
men, is clearly not one which the new animal theories are 
prepared to accept and if the soul of our grandam did in- 
habit a wild fowl, it is expected to show itself superior to 
us by carrying all the virtues of our higher incarnation into 
its low estate. But nature knows better, and perhaps when 
a few more babies are sacrificed to Irish setters, or beau- 
tiful women, like Miss Elizabeth Mayland, of Yorkshire 
fame, sent to nunneries through the lacerations of jealous 
collies, the place of our dumb relations in the scale of being 
will be more safely adjusted, and babies and poodles not so 
embarrassingly mixed in human homes and sympathies. The 
recent story of a gallant fireman carrying out a pet poodle 



Our Dumb Relations 77 

in its blankets and pillows from a burning mansion in the 
brave hope that he was rescuing the heir of the family, is a 
good companion-piece to the flowery obsequies of the late 
lamented Pluto. 

Tlie waste of sentiment upon beasts and all creeping 
things while everywhere humanity is starving for it, is one 
of the edifying spectacles of our modern civilization, and 
only equaled by the irony of the animal's sublimely indif- 
ferent attitude toward it. One of the truest animal lovers 
of the land, touching their best estate, writes: "Not one 
of them is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth," 
and clearly he deems it enough for man to bear the weight 
of unhappy respectability without trjung to fit the free ani- 
mal kingdom to it. Society may be, as the duchess of Bed- 
ford deems it, a kind of zoo, but, even so, each beast after 
his own kind was the order of creation, and science has not 
yet found the missing link that quite unites the human and 
animal zoo. That it discerns in all shapes of animal life 
"a form of the same great power that quickens us also," is 
the real ground of the respect it demands of us for every 
living thing. In the light of this high truth it does indeed 
become a serious matter to set foot upon a worm. Never- 
theless, it is no pleasanter now than in Job's day to say to 
the worm, "Thou art my mother and my sister." 



PROPHETS AND DISCIPLES 

THERE is always danger of a Saul among the prophets. 
Worse still, the possibility of falling into the hands of 
lying prophets. But when a great seer declares his limita- 
tions and avers that it is only the ignorant who have con- 
fidence in him he really ought to awaken a better confidence 
in all hearers. It is one of the prime truths in the line of 
the psychic tliat only they who are ignorant turn to the 
outside prophet. They who are not ignorant look within. 
"The mystic," says a recent speaker, "is he who beholds 
things from his viewpoint of the unseen, and he is always 
a plagiarist because of necessity he builds that unseen from 
the images and material of the seen." To what end there- 
fore should Maeterlinck, Whitman, Blake or any other seer 
or mystic undertake to shape the spirit world for the man 
who can think for himself, or resolve the secret of spirit 
power save to those who have never learned it for them- 
selves.'^ It is the ignorant, of course, who turn to them fo5 
light and commonly, too, it is the ignorant who abuse them 
for the unsatisfying character of that light. 

The main difficulty in this field is from an army of "dis- 
appointed and ignorant disciples" who expect from every 
new prophet or explorer who arises in it something that he 
is in nowise competent to furnish them, and that is the life 
touch that shall open their eyes. Not until man knows 
himself as a part of the unseen world is it any use to paint 
the imagery and mastery of it to his bewildered mind. The 
utmost that any poet, prophet, teacher or preacher can do, 

78 



Prophets and Disciples 79 

is to "play upon the latent infinity within us," as Stanley 
Lee expresses it, and help us find that larger self that knits 
us to the unseen, the universal. Why then should any ra- 
tional creature run after sage or mystic to instruct him 
instead of sitting down under his own bo-tree and making 
it all out for himself? Or better still, walking his own 
straightforward, fearless way into the open door of the 
kingdom that has never been denied him? 

There is no question, of course, that there are great and 
infallible psychic laws whereby the mastery of the spirit 
forces may be laid hold of. But the beauty of this truth 
is, that the humblest peasant appears to have been as suc- 
cessful as the subtlest philosopher in finding them out, or, 
at least, in living them out, with no concern about defining 
them. Indeed, the majority of people who live bravely and 
decently their troublous lives are entirely in the line of them, 
and the tremendous metaphysical, theosophical and occult 
S3^stems and teachings that are built around them serve oft- 
times only to bewilder and perplex the "ignorant," but self- 
taught "disciple." It is like the professor's wife who had 
no trouble in sewing on a button till her inquiring husband 
said, "My dear, how do you manage to hit the hole instead 
of the button? I never could do it." Then for the first time 
she broke her needle in seeking the hole, and replied merely, 
"Well, since you have called my attention to it, I can't 
either.'* 

Before man began to speculate much about the laws and 
principles that knit him to his creator he sat placidly in 
tent doors or beside still waters communing with God and 
his angels on all the affairs of life. But when there came 
priests and rites and cumbrous systems the veil of the tem- 
ple rose between him and his God, and not even the coming 
of the human Christ has thoroughly rent it asunder. Never- 



80 Prophets arid, Disciples 

theless the intervention of all creatures was rejected by him. 
"Go into your closet and when you have shut your door 
commune with your Father, who is in secret, and your Father 
who seeth in secret shall reward you openl3^" That is all 
there is of it. Don't ask Maeterlinck, or Blake, or sage or 
mystic of any school, how you shall reach the invisible. Talk 
to God for yourself and establish your own connection, 
"All that God is," says Nash, "he puts in pledge for your 
perfecting," and there is nothing for man to do but claim 
the benefit of that pledge. The foundation of that grand 
principle of human brotherhood which now runs through 
every branch of philosoph}^, sociology or religion is, of 
course, the great truth that every man has God for his 
Father and can approach him in the full confidence of a 
child at any moment. 

The new platonic mysticism which Plotinus well charac- 
terizes as "half a swoon and half an ecstasy" still pours its 
subjective stream into much of the teaching on this subject, 
so that nothing short of a trance or an epileptic fit seems 
equal to reducing man to that etherealized condition held 
necessary for the sacred communication. Even the sanest 
of the modern mystics tell us that much inner knowledge 
and deep experience must have been acquired to open to us 
this spirit connection. But consider, in the weight of all 
this, the simplicity of that open-air call of the Lord to the 
man in the sycamore tree, "Zacchaeus, come down, for this 
day I must abide at thy house." 

"God has most to give us in the common things of life," 
says a writer of to-day, and one of but yesterday declares, 
"God must have loved the common people best — he made so 
many of them." Is it conceivable, then, that only to a few 
ecstatic dreamers, or even sage psychologists, he would have 
left the secret of that tie that binds man to himself, instead 



Prophets and Disciples 81 

of to the whole army of toiling men, the publicans and the 
sinners, who cry out in their need to him, and in that very 
cry establish the relation over which the schools and philoso- 
phers have been agonizing for ages? It is life that teaches, 
and few can go very far in it without learning that some- 
thing beyond brute force is at the heart of power. To 
"feel after" and find it is better than asking some other feeler 
how far along he is in the business. And if a writer has 
spent his life in trying to bring this truth home to men and 
still they turn to him for illumination and some coveted 
revelation, is it strange that he calls them his "ignorant 
disciples." 

A knowledge that can only come from within is a curious 
thing to be demanding of one's teachers and it is a recog- 
nized difficulty in the study of even psychic phenomena that 
not all the testimony in the world Avill convince a man of 
anything occult that he can not verify in his own experi- 
ence. Who of all the devout advocates of a literal Scrip- 
ture verily believes that Lazarus rose from the dead, or, 
claiming to believe it, takes in one shadow of its tremendous 
import in the still baffling questions of death and the here- 
after? Out of the depths of his own consciousness, or no- 
where, man comes to the belief in immortality, and so in the 
silence and deeps of his own soul and its needs, he touches 
hands with God and the spirit forces, or nowhere. To what 
mounts of power or vision the touch shall lift him is another 
matter not to be determined by the teachers. 

Not all who see God in the burning bush take off their 
shoes or leave the night behind them. Yet, there are souls 
that can make their bed in hell without losing their hold on 
God, while others can serve in all his holy temples without 
ever finding him. Here, too, the soul baffles the creed-mak- 
ers and psychologist and renders it impossible to say by 



82 Prophets and Disciples 

what principle of light or darkness the power of the invis- 
ible is made known to it. That always and everywhere that 
power waits to unfold itself to every soul is about all that 
can be confidently asserted. And if, knowing that, man can 
not manage to make his own connection with the life forces, 
it is doubtful if all the prophets or teachers in the universe 
can do much to help him. 



SATAN IN LITERATURE 

TO Shakespeare and his contemporaries the Prince of 
Darkness was a gentleman. The flower of wickedness 
of old required some fineness in it. Sin was a sweet morsel 
under the tongue. The confessions of a Rosseau or Au- 
gustine touched the empyrean as well as the pit. Verlaine 
in the slums or the criminal's cell was still a god of celes- 
tial flights and unrivaled intuitions of spirit truth. Villon 
in his blackest moments bore still the spotless sheen of "the 
snows of yesterday." The divinity of genius glorified the 
very cohorts of hell, and Satan was but a fallen Lucifer, 
whom the worshipers of power and greatness must perforce 
admire. 

All this was too much honor for Satan. "The angels, 
not half so happy in heaven, went envying him" and his. 
And so now he has fallen from his high estate, and we have 
the "journal intime," or notes from his confessional, full of 
small worries over toothbrushes and black underclothes, 
and redolent of vulgar oaths, which science tells us the most 
impotent of his subjects indulge in to change the currents 
of their ruffled being by shocking ears polite. Worst of 
all, the women, who have taken him in charge, propose to 
marry him and dress him out in "conventional clothes" and 
set him up in a little red and yellow heaven of short dura- 
tion, which shall match him. It is hard to part like this 
with the grand Byronic devil, or accomplished Mephis- 
topheles of literature. But, after all, it may be the only 

83 



84* Satan in Literature 

way to escape his beguiling subtleties and set up a safer 
ruler in his place. 

The work of the decadents and even realists, the D'An- 
nuncios, and Moores, and Zolas, has been to cultivate the 
devil along such low and loathsome lines that every trace of 
Lucifer-like greatness has been taken out of him, and unless 
some new devil can be put in literature it is no use asking 
us to run along the slimy track of this poor, shining, pes- 
simistic Satan, in conventional clothes or petticoats, wildly 
anathematizing the universe and asking us to pity him in 
his own damnation. It was a very wise discerner of the 
laws of life who tells us that "when half gods go, the gods 
arrive," and it may be that when this Satanic half god of 
the romances fails him he will cast about for some true god 
to put in his place. And then perhaps we shall see that 
spiritual renaissance in literature which the spiritual renais- 
sance in thought and philosophy should have ushered in 
ere this. 

To resolve some strength, intensity and sparkle of ef- 
fervescent life into the better forces, some Miltonic touch 
to show "the might and majesty of loveliness," has been the 
crying need of modern life and literature. For though all 
science and philosophy conspire to show us how poor, stu- 
pid and self-destructive evil is, and how weak, senseless and 
craven the cry of the pessimist, yet the effort to bring life 
and letters up to the standard of such teaching is scarcely 
perceptible, unless it may be in this very dismantling of the 
devil of all the finer glories that once shone about him. That 
does, indeed, suggest the hope that some grand master of the 
new order may arise to consign the glories and heroism of 
life to their true place and show us "how sublime it is to 
suffer and be strong." Nay, more, to refuse to suffer like 
dumb beasts of the field, when we may swing ourselves into 



Satan in Literature 85 

the ryhthmic joy and harmony of the spheres and look 
down the ages with a laugh and a song. 

There was a time, to be sure, when about everything 
bright, spicy, and beguiling was consigned to the devil. 
That was before the teachers had shown us that "the mis- 
chief in a boy is the basis of his education," or the theo- 
logians had opened their ears to the Psalmist's declaration 
that "gladness is sown for the upright." Beauty and 
strength belong, indeed, to the sanctuaries of the Lord of 
life, in these days, and "the diseased has he not strength- 
ened." That is why the diseased and neurotic writers send 
out such weak and piteous wails to some "devil, fate, or 
world," to come and help them, and more and more as they 
define the devil they believe in, they show him totally impo- 
tent to do anything for them. The angels of light are sweep- 
ing through his old dominion, and gathering to themselves 
even the bright and primrose things of human dalliance he 
has been wont to claim. Mirth and laughter, wit and song, 
are of them, love is all of them, and those natural human 
desires, into wliich the poor degenerates are trying to fuse 
such lurid flames of hell, burn with their brightest glow at 
their pure altars. It is the white heat of the furnace, not 
the red, that marks the utmost intensity of the fire, and life 
at its mightiest is ever the white flame. The writers who 
can show us that, are the coming masters in literature, and 
all science and nature are ready to wait upon them. 

"Any nose may ravage with impunity a rose," says one 
of our sarcastic poets, but the sweet rose of life is not to 
lose its fragrance because it has become, in the nostrils of 
the decadent or pessimist, "an empty damned weariness." 
The end of it can only be, now as ever, that the rose will be- 
long to liim who can pluck it, and a hundred devils to paint 
it red will not turn it over to the grasp of any too weak to 



86 Satan in Literature 

seize it in its pristine loveliness. Genius, in all its bounds, 
well knows this, and it must be to tempt them to their own 
destruction that it is leading its false votaries farther and 
farther away from the saving truth of it. Meantime, in 
the common walks of life, the work may be for our salva- 
tion, for so long as Satan himself could borrow the harp of 
a Villon or Verlaine we were bound to run after him , and 
risk hades for the glimpse of heaven he could unfold to us. 
Now, only, when he drops down into the pit of the pessimist 
and whines in impotence are we quite ready to part com- 
pany with him. 



CONCERNING HAPPINESS 

THERE is no word in any language so idly tossed about 
by wise and foolish alike as that beguiling word hap- 
piness. Pursued by everybody and understood by none — 
truly achieved by none — happiness is still expatiated upon, 
inculcated, and estimated, by every writer or speaker who 
can catch the public ear as if any knowledge of experience 
could lay back of the effort. The result in recent days has 
come to be a contradiction of terms which any honest mind 
must discern for itself. Happiness as a duty, happiness as 
a task, a "great task," as one honest soul puts it, has come 
to be the interesting form in which the delicious, elusive 
and mysterious object of all human hopes and dreams is 
presented to man's mind. And this in the light of the rec- 
ognized fact in human experience that what comes un- 
sought, unbought, takes fright at the very idea of becom- 
ing a task. 

It seems to be the cheering up philosopher who is re- 
sponsible for this turn of affairs in the kingdom of happi- 
ness. The cheerful spirit, the habit of looking on the bright 
side of things, may indeed be cultivated and make life far 
more bearable and probably more open to the entrance of 
the deeper spirit of joy. But it is true still that such la- 
bored cheer is not happiness nor worthy to be compared with 
it in any true sense. Even a modern Christian philosopher 
admits this. "The resolute cheerfulness that can be to a 
certain extent captured and secured by an effort of the will," 
he says, "though it is perhaps a more useful quality than 

87 



88 Concerning Happmess 

natural joy, is not to be compared with the unreasoning, in- 
communicable rapture, which sometimes without conscious 
effort or desire descends upon the spirit like sunshine after 
rain." The quality of happiness, like mercy, it appears 
from this, is not strained as the teachers make it, but drop- 
peth like the gentle dew from heaven and requires merely 
the proper atmosphere to resolve itself in. To say that it 
can accommodate itself to any condition is unscientific and 
untrue, and the tendency of such teaching is to embarrass 
and hinder any saving solution of the problem. 

In fact, the thing that makes it look as though happi- 
ness, as we count it, was not exactly meant to be our salva- 
tion, is that the best of it is liable to pall upon our hands 
and the hour arrives when the bravest of us begin to ques- 
tion if the game is worth the candle. It is then, too, that 
the test moment for the menticulturist comes in, and if he 
has not brought us to a point where we can face life with- 
out happiness, the whole foundation of his gorgeous temple 
crumbles. Has anybody said that it is not happiness, but 
the courage to bear unhappiness, that humanity stands in 
need of .'^ If not, life says it at every turn, and with all the 
sugar coating they put upon the pill it is little more than 
that the New Thought people are offering us. Ah, they 
are too wise to dream that happiness can be caught with 
hook or line of either mind or matter's casting. Something 
just drops out of the sky or tree top, or perhaps the post- 
man's bag, and there stands the grinning little joy imp and 
all the universe is a-twitter with him. About the only thing 
that can be definitely predicated of him is that he is more 
likely to arrive when you have made up your mind that you 
can get along without him. Perhaps, however, it is just 
as well not to tell any lies about not wanting him, and, above 
all else, not to say that he is dead. There really is some- 



Concerning Happiness 89 

thing in believing that he exists and is at the heart of true 
life wherever it is. This, of course, is why the pious ones 
tell us that he is one with the good, but as they make such 
a botch about determining what the good is, they are often, 
as little Alice Carroll has it, "more stupider" than the im- 
pious in resolving the problem. Certainly it is only when 
some of them '"turn their backs" that we are able to "sneak 
happiness" from the so-called impious ones who comprehend 
the situation. 

At the best, happiness is an uncertain commodity, and 
if you can not find it in the "wind on the heath, brother," 
or the daisy on the hillside, or most of all, the burning bush 
by the wayside, don't be too sure that you can evolve it 
from those diamonds, pomps and "conditions" of the wealthy 
which the matter-of-fact philosophers are trying to per- 
suade you are the essential part of it. In fact, it is a 
chance to escape from their "conditions" and chase light- 
footed happiness to some gypsy cover for wliich the ma- 
jority of these "fortunate" ones are this moment sighing. 
Wealth and society have pretty effectually armed themselves 
against happiness and well-nigh chased it off the face of the 
earth. Nevertheless, the good things of life are not to be 
despised in the case, and if the menticulturists can show us 
how to grab them by keeping calm about it there is no use 
in turning our backs upon them. 

It is not every one who has what a Western editor terms 
the "mental endowment" to be fascinated by the nearness 
of bankruptcy or take supreme pleasure in finding the in- 
visible line between a sufficiency and a deficiency," and for 
those who need a little gold dust or carbon, more or less, to 
put them at ease, it is not ill to know the kind of mental en- 
dowment that helps in that direction also. The scientists 
do say that pessimistic views of the situation secrete a slow 



90 Concerning Happmess 

poison in the S3^stem that makes the achievement of any de- 
sire more difficult, and so perhaps "thinking happiness" is 
not so irrational a thing after all, unless, of course, one sits 
down like the old woman in the story and lets the more 
active aspirer kick over his basket of eggs while he is think- 
ing. Merely to get enough happiness or good cheer into 
his thoughts to set him moving appears to be the main end 
of the happy philosophy, and then, by the time the true 
disciple comes to the place where he finds that he was fooled 
about happiness, he has recruited enough strength to go on 
without it. Courage, therefore, is the first and last word 
of the whole philosophy, and it has been so ever since our 
first parents fared forth into the wilderness wondering how 
they could go on with their backs to Eden. 



INDIVIDUALITY 

IF you want to know what an occult and unresolved being 
you are, both to yourself and your nearest of kin, read 
Prof. Royce's scholarly little volume on "The Conception 
of Immortality." If you want to know how to attain a hope 
of ever finding yourself and immortality together, read it 
again to the last syllable. Between whiles ponder on your 
loneliness and consider whether it is worth while to cheat 
yourself into the idea that you know anybody or give your 
affections to anything but the unique and elusive ideal of 
somebody. 

It is all a question of individuality, and though that seems 
easy to the superficial observer, who thinks only that you 
are you and I am I, it takes, as Prof. Royce shows, an "en- 
tire system of philosophy" to give it one peg to hang on. 
But when you have compassed that philosophy you have 
got at the heart of all things and attained not only your 
own unique place as an individual, but your true and ever- 
lasting relation "to other individuals and to the all-inclusive 
individual God himself." Hence the pledge of immortality 
in this idea and demand of individuality — uniqueness of be- 
ing — which here finds no fulfillment. Meantime there is the 
lonesomeness of it. "For we love individuals, we trust in 
them, we honor and pursue them, we glorify them and hope 
to know them. But we know, if we are sufficiently thought- 
ful, that we can never either find them with our eyes or de- 
fine them in our minds." And this hopelessness of finding 
what we most love, this loneliness of the soul in the critical 

91 



92 Individuality 

light of life, "constitutes one of the deepest tragedies of 
human existence." 

Prof. Royce commits this tragedy of loneliness, this mock- 
ing vanity of the search for the true beloved mainly to the 
"keenly critical," the "worldly wise," but in reality it has 
been the throbbing pain of all humanity since time and love 
began. The vain strivings "to find one anotlier," to ex- 
press ourselves to one another, lie at the root of half man's 
bitterest experiences and defeated days. The long history 
of art and literature is little more than the story of their 
efforts to help us in this sad business, and the gauge of their 
success is the exact measure of their power in this direction. 
It is for this that we fall down and worship Shakespeare; 
for this that we forgive Balzac his coarseness, Browning 
his hard rhymes, Maeterlinck his cloudy sj^mbolisms, and for 
this that we rush madly after any Dudeney or Wharton who 
promises to offer us some new touchstone of the inner be- 
ing. "Do we know anybody .? Ah, dear me, we are very 
lonely in the world," murmurs the gentle Thackeray, and 
every master writer since writing began has sounded the 
same chord. "Man is born alone, grows up alone, learns 
alone, works alone, thinks alone, dies alone," writes Walter 
Besant. "The only thing that seems to take away his lone- 
liness is his marriage. Then, because he has another per- 
son always in the house with him, he feels perhaps that he is 
not quite so lonely. It is an illusion; every man is quite 
alone." 

That is the measure of it. Every man is quite alone, and 
too often doubly alone when he has some one in the house 
with him. Prof. Royce is right. "An individual is a being 
that no finite search can find. Not even in case of our most 
trusted friends, not even after years of closest intimacy, 
can men as they now are either define in thought or find di- 



Individuality 93 

rectly presented in experience the individual beings whom 
they most love and trust." As he quotes you from Brown- 
ing, that most excellent lady of your choice and worship is 
not to be found even in the house you "inhabit together," 
though you "search room after room." 

From the wing to tlie center 
She goes out as you enter. 

However, she goes somewhere. Prof. Royce is sure that 
she is not a pure abstraction ; she is "somehow certainly 
real," and that she is and that you can not find her here, 
yet preserve the vision of her, is the sweet assurance of some 
beyond where you shall find her. Wherefore hang to your 
ideals, cling to your spirit loves? Helen may desert you 
for Paris, Abelard prove, as Mark Twain has it, "an un- 
principled humbug," Launcelot and Guinevere tear up a 
king's household, but that unique and glorious being who 
represents to j^ou what nobody else ever was or could be 
still lives for you "in a higher and richer realm" of perfected 
being. 

There, says Royce, shall your friend's life "glow with 
just that unique position of the divine that no other life in 
all the world expresses," and meet your first demand that 
there shall be none beside it. And this because the very 
uniqueness of the divine life demands it. "Just because 
God attains and wins and finds this uniqueness, all our lives 
win, in our union with him, the individuality which is essen- 
tial to their true meaning." This is better than being "swal- 
lowed up in Brahm," after the conception of the Hindoo, 
or even sharing in the "personality of the absolute," after 
the idea of Hegel. But why, since individuality and ideals 
can only be realized through union with God, in the end they 
should not seek this method in the beginning is more than 



94 Individuality 

any of the philosophers can make clear to us. All the saints 
and seers since Augustine down have been plainly declaring 
to us that such union was all we needed. "Restless till we 
rest in Thee" is the verdict of all who have known man, or 
in anywise read the spirit that is within him. Nevertheless, 
we go chasing up and down the earth in pursuit of the 
"elusive goal," of an individual to meet our needs, or sit 
down in a great, wide, loneliness and stare into the faces of 
the specters we have captured, and wonder why life is empty. 
The tragedy of seeking what we most love and finding it not 
lies heavy upon us, while all the time it is nigh us, even at 
the door. 

By no mystic vision, says Prof. Royce, can we win our 
union with God. We must toil for it. No doubt. Yet 
other voices have whispered that is was simply to feel after 
if haply we might find him. The "finite strivings" that con- 
sciously intend "oneness with God" are vain, indeed, if they 
do not consciously find oneness with Him. It is in the silence 
and the darkness and the loneliness of these finite strivings, 
and gropings, and yearnings, that no brother man can un- 
derstand or lighten, that the soul most needs the conscious- 
ness of union with the all-good and powerful. It may be as set 
forth that the fulfillment of that union is "not here, not now, 
in time and amid the blind striving of the present." But it 
is somehow through the darkness that the shining link is 
forged that binds man to the eternal, and, as the poet tells us, 

Through the dim. 
Close prison bars that shut man from his kind 
God reaches down to make us one with Him. 



SCIENCE AND LAUGHTER 

A WORLD of no laughter is the refined estate which 
threatens us, "Mirth and jollity are well-nigh ban- 
ished from the globe," writes a British scientist and "laugh- 
ter holding both its sides" has been kicked from circle to 
circle of life's playhouse till even the pit has incontinentl}^ 
turned it out of doors. A mechanical hand-clapping of 
solemn, bored-looking spectators is all that the most rol- 
licking farce can elicit from an audience of to-day. 

Man, as a laughing animal, is no longer distinguished 
from the brute creation. Indeed, science finds that dogs, 
apes and other happy beasts can refresh themselves with a 
grin, while care-burdened man is losing even the muscles 
that could shape themselves into a laugh. Incidentally, too, 
the mind and the morals. No man is wholly bad who can 
laugh, said the ancient student of his kind, and the mod- 
ern scientist is beginning to consider what, by inference, 
he must become when he can not laugh. Saturnine, if not 
Satanic, is the moral phase of it. And, as for the mental, 
the distance from the grim troglodyte to the laughing 
philosopher is the measure of that. The cave man, it is said, 
did not laugh. It took unfathomed deeps of time and 
thought to resolve him into an Aristophanes or a Rabelais. 
However, even "when the bird walks we see that it has wings," 
and, having learned to laugh, it may not be easy to wipe the 
impress of that laugh out of the human family. It is a 
curious circumstance that the cry of its decline should come 
at just the time when all creation is recommending the 

95 



96 Science and Laughter 

cheerful act as the escape from every ill or hardship of mor- 
tal destiny. 

To "sit on the stile and continue to smile" is the one pre- 
scribed way to "soften the heart" of any "terrible cow" or 
lion encountered in all life's highway. And it is just like 
science, and the irony of fate, to show us the exact way to 
save ourselves, and then declare that we have lost the power 
to use it. It is of a piece with the heartless squib which 
tells us to read the irresistible joke on "making the best of 
it," and then adds that it was dug up in the excavations 
near Nippur. To have lost the power to smile over the 
soothing reflections of the new thought philosophy is cer- 
tainly one of the meanest turns outrageous fate has served 
us. Not to be able to sit above the ashes of our dead hopes 
and smile that at least we have not a hair lip, as one bright 
philosopher, or satirist, invites us, is a calamity that may 
well claim the attention of science. The time to laugh is 
so clearly when the lightning strikes you that it is strange 
that neither saints nor philosophers found it out earlier. 
Stranger still that the presiding deities at the fount of true 
laughter are shutting off our power to laugh, just as we have 
found it out. The connection is too patent to escape the 
suggestion that perhaps they are not altogether pleased 
with our assumed spirits. 

This laughing "that we may not weep" is grand and 
Byronic, no doubt, but, somehow, it seems to be at the core 
of much of the lost mirth and laughter of the whole earth. 
Perhaps there is something too forced and artificial in it. 
Like the stump speaker who declared that he was never so 
strained as when he kicked at nothing, this sweet smiling 
at everything or nothing may be overreaching itself. At 
any rate, it is putting the cart before the horse in many 
cases, and trying to make the prescribed smile take the place 



Science and Laughter 97 

of the energetic action that should win it. "I'm tired of 
playing the cheerful idiot among pots and kettles," said a 
talented woman recently, when a reverse of fortune flung her 
from parlor to kitchen to try the "contented spirit" philoso- 
pliy, and then she rose up and conquered through her true 
powers the laugh of him who wins. It is only when you have 
tried every other way possible to propitiate fate that you 
can afford to sit down and ring defiant laughter into his 
grim face. It is onl}^ then, too, that he will come, a smil- 
ing subject, to see "what you are laughing at." He laughs 
best who laughs last, runs the old adage, and some measure 
of security in the cheerful throne set up for them is a demand 
Avhich the disciples of the new Democritus may well make 
of him. 

Reduced to the last analysis, it is mainly a chance to 
laugh that the earth child of any century needs. Give him 
that, and neither science nor society need fear that he will 
lose the capacity for it. In truth the springs of laughter, 
as of tears, lie too deep for either of them. The winds 
that sigh in the pine trees, and wliistle in the rushes, may 
know the secret of it. The clouds that weep, and the sun- 
beams that dance in glee, may guess why one morn wakes 
to unexplainable deeps of sadness, and another to soft rap- 
tures of mysterious joy. Mother nature and the mystic sis- 
ters of the distaff and spindle hold still the threads that 
flash gold or gray into the fabric of man's life. But one 
thing is certain, and that is, that they do not ask him to 
call black white, nor swear that the mantle of gray or sable 
is cheering to him as the cloth of gold. Sorrow may be bet- 
ter than laughter, yet none but a new school Ananias will 
pretend to say that he likes it as well. Indeed, since laugh- 
ter chased age and death along the plains of Gerar, and 
heaven made Sarah "to laugh," so that all the world should 



98 Science and Laughter 

laugh with her, no son of earth feels quite secure of his heri- 
tage if that bright humor and laugh which Harris so ex- 
pressively calls "a form of tenderness" be left out of it. 

A world of no laughter, indeed ! Why man even shrinks 
from a heaven with that ban upon it. And shall he be ex- 
pected to face the world pain in the chill of it. Not even 
the mourning saints have asked it of him, nor the prophets 
of any age. The righteous shall laugh and be glad, is the 
burden of their lay, and the British scientist is quite in its 
refrain when he calls laughter "the most beautiful expres- 
sion of goodness," the one that "gives genuineness to virtue 
and brings it nearest" to our human hearts. That it is 
"the manna," too, "on which good fellowship most loves to 
feed" more hearts than his can testify, even though such 
manna is denied them. It is no lack of will or skill that is 
stilling the sweet note of honest laughter in the earth. The 
impulse to smile in the pure atmosphere of smiles is not dead 
in poor humanity. Give us a chance to laugh, oh complain- 
ing world, and science will find no torpor in our organs. 
Stop the fever fret and drive, the strain of weariness, the 
oppression and the wrong, that choke the springs of glad- 
ness everywhere, and "deterioration in the physical and men- 
tal structure" will not prevent a choral strain of laughter 
from welling up from happy hearts through all creation's 
bounds. It is in the "moral nidus," say the wise ones, that 
laughter finds its colors. 

The death of laughter and the grave of joy is not the 
thing you promised us, oh sweet and smiling earth. "Stand 
by your early pledges, fulfill your millennium whispers of 
peace and good will to all men, "feed pure love," enkindle 
noble hope, and, above all, "beget the smile that has no bit- 
terness," or confess that you have mocked humanity with 
your own laughing skies and dimpled waters, and, as the an- 



Science and Laughter 99 

cients declared of you, borne children only to devour them. 
The calm and smiling face of nature in the teeth of all 
man's woes is a thing for which he must forever revile her. 
And yet, perhaps, the reproach is unjust; for with every 
recurring seed time and harvest she is trying to teach him 
the saving truth that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he 
also reap, and that you can not sow tears and dragons' 
teeth and reap laughter. 



LIFE AND LITERATURE 

THE authors, like Chronos, have taken to devouring 
their children — turning out books by the ton, as one 
publisher reckons it, they still declare reading a lost art, 
great books a voice of the past, and the idea of a book in 
any shape one that the healthful, natural man rejects. 

Any one might have known that it would come to tliis. 
Conversation has long been declared a lost art, thinking has 
been pronounced a disease and reading must naturally go 
the way of its intellectual sisters. Education seems to be 
the only bugbear left to frighten us, but Gerald Stanley 
Lee is dealing it some telling blows and George Madden Mar- 
tin prepared its jfinish when he writes of Emmy Lou's in- 
structors, "Miss Fanny was a real person. The others had 
been teachers." Life rather than books, nature above all 
training, form the keynote of the new. liberty. The joy of 
living is the main thing, and to kill all our teachers the 
nearest wa}' to achieve it. Religion itself is not a thing to 
be "told to men." It is but a show to move their special 
wonder and set them to "trying for themselves" what it may 
be. Art still rides the wave, but art which is individual and 
whose "essential spiritual element" is "delight, delight, de- 
light." To find the spring of joy in his own soul and give 
free play to it is in short the beginning and end of the whole 
philosophy. 

Meantime he who thinks he has a story to tell, a message 
to bear to humanity, can spout it to the stars, or to the 
little fishes. Life, of which literature has been but the 

100 ' 



Life and Literature 101 

clumsy expression, is now to reveal itself through shining 
eyes and pulsing hearts that feel it. Man is to live his 
romance, not hunt it in a book, and the Shakespeare who 
unlocks his heart with a sonnet is still the "less Shakespeare" 
for his pains. They had no poet and they lived, no lawgiver 
and they loved one another, no preacher and they found the 
truth, is the story of the new man to be written not in 
books or on tables of stones, but fleshly tablets of the heart. 
Already souls have been discovered in Mulberry Street, and 
even in Fifth avenue, and Jacob Ries declares that one 
throb of the human heart is worth a w^hole book of sociol- 
ogy and all the stuff men write to reduce each other to items 
in infallible systems. "God wastes no history," says Brooks. 
Angels do not write books ; life and character are the only 
volumes that can truly record the truths and lessons of the 
ages. "Ye are our epistles, known and read of all men," 
said Paul to the Corinthians. Socrates and Christ wrote no 
books, left not a scrap of writing, and the round world has 
been molded by them. To follow the currents of humanity 
is the only hope of literature, and the man of to-day is the 
true story of all the past. To know only consists "in open- 
ing out a way whereby the imprisoned splendor may escape" 
and nature more truly than art can find that way. 

Oh, fret not after knowledge. 

I have none, 
And yet — the evening listens, 

sings Keats' thrush. Once man swings into the harmony 
of his own being the work of all his tutors will be done ; and 
it is time, no doubt, that the Gospel should be heeded which 
saith, "Much stud}'^ is a weariness of the flesh," and of tlie 
making of many books there should be an end. At least 
to pause long enough to get some new experience or ecstasy 



102 Life and Literature 

of life to put into thein would seem to be the part of wisdom, 
and it is to this end no doubt that the philosophers in the 
business are trying to spur man on to dip his soul in some 
fierce caldron of passion or delight that they may secure a 
new rapture if not a "new shudder" for their exhausted 
stock. To go on repeating the same joy and the same sor- 
row, the same longing and the same unrest, which the old 
Greeks weighed in the mythics of life long ago is beginning 
to pall upon the writers themselves, to say nothing of the 
long-suffering readers. To cease the eternal quest in the 
measured strains of literature and pursue it to the bound- 
less ocean of life is not a bad idea to dawn upon some of 
them. For, doubt it who will, the life secret that all the 
poets and writers of all ages have been blindly feeling after 
in song and story, is throbbing somewhere in the undersoul 
of being, and who knows what radiant day or fair new year 
may bring it to the surface .f" Already the joy bells of the 
round earth are beginning to ring its chimes, and the psy- 
chical wave in all thought and philosophy to herald its com- 
ing. One strong triumphant soul, not to write about it, 
but to discover it in living it, is all that is needed. And, 
oh, the longing souls that are waiting for that one. 

It is a marvel how the great Teacher who said, "Who- 
soever liveth and believeth in me shall never die," ever es- 
caped from the clamors of the dying in all directions. A 
greater marvel still that the mystic but philosophic truth 
of his words has but just begun to dawn upon a perishing 
world. Yet the truths that set men free must come slowly 
to the toiling masses, say all the prophets, but that is be- 
cause they have forgotten the Scripture, which saith that 
when the kingdom of heaven is come the violent take it by 
force. Books, preachers, poets may pipe or prose forever 
about the secret springs of life, but he who breaks the way 



Life and Liter attire 103 

to them, tastes them for himself, alone knows of their sweet- 
ness and reality. "Look in thy heart and write," was the 
counsel of the bookish past, and wise was the writer who 
heeded it. But, look in thy heart and live is the cry of the 
glorious present, and yet absolutely to do this one must get 
away as far as possible from nearly all the writers, and a 
large proportion of the teachers and preachers. Such per- 
versions of the human heart and its affections as have been 
palmed off on us as the real thing by our masters and men- 
tors would incline us to look into Tophet or Hecate's cal- 
dron rather than waste time on such inner deformities. 

No doubt it is this violence done to the heart and its pure 
life currents by the so-called makers of literature that leads 
some of the more earnest of our writers to doubt if the 
natural man was ever meant to sit down and read a book. 
Like poor Francesca, playing with Greek fire "to bring to 
birth new ardors in her soul," it is an element of wild de- 
struction that the natural man too often finds himself sport- 
ing with when he sits down to read a book. "Delight" may 
be indeed, as Arthur Jerome Eddy declares, "the essential 
spiritual element" of art, as it ever is of life, but, ah, it is 
its "raiment of pure joy" that the exiled soul is seeking, 
and who, of all our artists, knows how to weave for it that 
white and seamless garment? "If I were to tell you what I 
really think of the best books, I am afraid you would call 
me the greatest literary heretic or an utter ignoramus," 
said that great student of language and literature. Max 
Muller. "I know few books, if any, which I should call good 
from beginning to end." The truth is that it has been too 
much the imperfect, the incomplete man who has made our 
books for us. Life, with all its aspirations, all its passions, 
all its heroisms, has not yet swept him up to those celestial 
heights where he could see and interpret it in all its beauty 



104* Life and Literature 

and fullness. It is life that must grow greater, clearer, 
surer and diviner to the spirit's sight before the true book 
shall be bom to us. But perhaps when that time comes we 
shall need no books, whether it be this year or the next. 



ENEMIES AND REVENGES 

THE old-fashioned idea appears still to prevail that a 
man can dispose of his enemy by killing him. Also, 
that he can get away from himself by blowing his own brains 
out. Both ideas are scorned by the enlightened. 

If the red slayer thinks he slays, 
Or if the slain thinks he is slain. 
They know not well the subtle ways 
I keep, and pass, and turn again. 

Thus Brahm punctured the bubble long ago, and science 
has been riddling it with shot wherever it appeared, ever 
since. And yet to-day not the smallest sheet issues from 
the morning press without reeking with the tale of murders 
and suicides the world over. Lombroso and his school call 
this red peril disease, or insanity, and there is no ques- 
tion that some vile disorder is in it. Yet, while there is no 
telling whose son or brother may waken up at morn or in 
the dead of night in the worst throes of the malady, it is 
really risking too much to trust to the uncertain diagnosis 
of the criminologists. 

As there is considerable method in the madness, too, a 
possibility of reasoning together over the towering unrea- 
son in the principle of it may 3^et be left us. It is, of course, 
a general blindness, despite all science's teaching, to the true 
laws of being that lies at the root of the trouble. A few 
glimpses into Dante's universe of moral order, where the 
deed returns upon the head of the doer, and the murderer 

105 



106 Enemies and Revenges 

swelters in the blood he has spilt, or the suicide who kills 
himself because he is "tired of buttoning and unbuttoning," 
dwells ever in the darkness and quagmire of his own glooms 
and inactivities, might change perhaps the effort of mad 
humanity to call death to its assistance in accomplishing 
ends that life denies it. In a rude mining camp of the far 
West a discouraged miner rose up one black morning and 
walked boldly into the eating room of a newcomer, who had 
flung out the enticing sign, "Meals at All Hours," to the 
hungry gold diggers. "Stranger," he said, going up to the 
counter, "I have had devilish hard times lately. I think 
I'll kill somebody to change my luck." And at that he shot 
the peaceful restaurant man through the heart. The min- 
ers consummated the desperado's luck by hanging him to 
the nearest tree, but the logic of his performance was about 
the same as that which actuates every crazy creature who 
tries the death remedy for his ills. The odds of life have 
gone against him and he kills himself, or somebody else, in 
some mad dream of changing his luck. That there is noth- 
ing in death to change anything in the line of conscious 
being is a reflection away beyond him. Yet even to the most 
clouded intellect it would seem to be clear that it is life and 
not death that can enable a man to eff^ect his ends, either 
toward himself or toward his enemies, and life at its highest. 
The true way to revenge oneself on an enemy is to let him 
live, and practice the Christian virtues upon him. If that 
does not make him shrivel up and fall off^ the earth, or the 
part of it that you inhabit, no amount of lead in his body 
will. It may seem an easy matter to kill your enemies, but 
unless you can do it, as some people tell us the good Lord 
does, by destroying both soul and body in fire, it is no use 
taking savage liberties with the body. Lacking this power, 
it is really safest to "agree with thine adversary quickly," 



Enemies and Revenges 10*7 

lest by your efforts to harm him he secures the spiritual mas- 
tery in the case, and hands you over to the Judge of Life, 
and the Judge casts you into that prison where every soul 
must languish that does the slightest wrong to another soul. 
Verily, thou shalt not come out thence till thou hast paid the 
uttermost farthing. For that is the law of life, running 
from the womb to man, and the philosopher is right who 
tells us that there is "No god dare wrong a worm." 

Tlie danger in an enemy is not so much that he may wrong 
you as that you may be surprised into doing some despicable 
wrong to him which will turn you back on your whole up- 
ward course for its expiation. The greatest of the psy- 
chologists knew what he was doing for man when he taught 
him to love his enemies, and that wise old Publius discerned 
the higher gains in the matter when he said "it is an un- 
happy lot which finds no enemies." "I had a friend," was 
the explanation which one sweet soul gave for all the riches 
and graces of life and character that came to him, but "I 
had an enemy" is ofttimes the secret of higher greatness and 
development. The most baffling enemy, of course, to deal 
with is the enemy within one's self. Armies and navies can 
not rid one of this foe, and the pessimistic weaklings who 
are trying to throttle him with bed ropes are getting farther 
and farther away from any hope in the case. " 'Tis life 
of which their nerves are scant," and to ask death to sup- 
ply the want is the last lunacy. One bold grasp for them- 
selves of that full orb of life which they are petitioning 
fate, worlds and red devils to bring them, would end the 
battle and give them suns, stars and eternities to wait upon 
them. It is because he does not know himself and the powers 
that are within him that man sends such puerile wails into 
the universe. 

Do not try to save your brother by sermons or criticism, 



108 Enemies and Revenges 

says the priest of Brahmin. Tell him who and what he is 
and he will save himself, and it is certain that he who knows 
his life to be one with the eternal will not try to kill himself 
with a jack-knife. It is a great thing to go about feeling 
that the infinite spirit of the universe is interested in what 
you do, says Dr, Hale, and then, he adds, with an uncon- 
scious sarcasm perhaps upon the pessimistic literature of 
to-day, that this feeling is not to be found in books, but in 
the open air, in the breaking off of a dandelion, the heark- 
ening to a bird song. The farmer boy of the wide West 
does not curse his fate, he tells us, and if the farmer girl 
does, it must be because she gives more attention to the bath- 
room floor and the scrub brush than to that "floor of heaven 
thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," which nowhere 
shines with more seductive dreams of all infinity and might 
than in that magic West, where plain and sky melt into one 
vast and boundless immensity, or mountain peaks in still 
and awful grandeur "pierce the white radiance of eternity." 
To lose himself in the bosom of the infinite is the only hope 
that science, nature and religion off'er man in his effort to 
get away from that smaller ego that troubles him so. And 
meantime the yet grander truth remains that only in such 
loss can he ever truly find himself. 



THE GOSPEL OF DESPAIR 

EVIDENTLY it is not all that labor and are heavy 
laden who care to have their burdens aired by the nov- 
elists. Miss Mary E, Wilkins was taken to task by the 
New England shoemaker, and the "Portion of Labor" she 
had assigned to him most incontinently scorned by his 
criticisms. Any shoemaker could write a better novel, he 
averred indignantly, which, considering the kind of talent 
she ascribed to the shoe man, is rather hard on Mary Wil- 
kins. It is the retort discourteous that might be expected, 
however, from the exaggerated pictures that are drawn in 
many cases of the "other half" of humanity by that com- 
plaisant upper half that really knows nothing about it. 
With the best intention in the world to help the matter, 
many good souls have put it almost beyond the reach of help 
by the impenetrable blackness flung about it, and it is not 
strange that a few voices from this charnel house of all joy 
or comeliness, to which writers have assigned laborer, tramp, 
bankrupt, thief or outcast in a body, should send forth a 
cry against being considered in such a dread and "bony 
light." Even Tommy Atkins has come back upon his cham- 
pion in many cases, with small thanks for the pains that 
took him out of the ranks of "the thin red line," and it is said 
that the ver}' worm of the slums is beginning to turn upon the 
upper class slummer, who is crowding it too deeply into the 
slime of the street for the benefit (?) of the cause. 

"The slummer's illusions," as one writer has it, which pic- 
ture a wailing, warring mass of humanity weltering in filth 

109 



] 10 The Gospel of Despair 

and vice, while only curses, groans and pistol shots fill the 
air, are yielding to a comprehension of "men and women 
going about their ordinary work in an ordinary way, quietly 
putting up with the inevitable," which, in their case, is bad 
enough, heaven knows, but not so bad as to make them unfit 
for decent eyes to look upon. A young society girl, going 
out last summer with tracts and lessons in behavior to the 
children of a country settlement recruited from the city 
slums, declared that the main difference she found in them 
was that they were more eager to learn and less bold in 
tlieir manners and questions than the children of the fash- 
ionable set, with whom she had labored in the Sunday 
schools. Human nature has its good and bad trails every- 
where, and even that "unspeakable Gorky" finds some sparks 
of the divine fire in the most blackened and beastly specimens 
that have ever been called up to pollute the pages of slum 
literature. The sin and stupidity of burying the objects of 
mission work in tlieir own slime is pre-eminently set forth, 
however, in the case of this new luminary from the pits. 
For, with all the scintillations from Schopenhauer and 
Nietzsche that he flashes through them in exploiting his own 
philosophy, the conclusion is inevitable that they are only 
fit for the lake that burnetii with fire and brimstone, and 
that, to "root them out of existence," as one of their own 
prophets has said, is the only way to save society from such 
moral lepers. And is it for this that Gorky came up from 
the abyss and was hailed as the "literary Messiah" who was 
to lead his poor brethren of the night out of their moral 
wilderness ? 

Indeed should it be for this anywhere that authors or 
artists, or so-called reformers, go down to the underworld 
with palette, pen or tract .'' If it is but to hunt the sores and 
putrefactions of humanity and proclaim them irremediable, 



The Gospel of Despair 111 

with the awful stolidity of the fatalist, or even the doom- 
promising dogmatist, to what end are our eyes invited to 
rest upon such spectacles, or the writhing victims of them 
called up to furnish them? Even as subjects for strong 
art there is no virtue in them, unless through them in some 
way the healing gleam of that eternal beauty and light 
wherein true art reposes can be made to shine. What then 
is to be said of an artist who setting out like Gorky witli 
this high thought in his mind yet misses the aim, and turns 
the awful but heroic figures of his first sketches into rant- 
ing and loathsome prophets of anarchy and rebellion pro- 
nouncing their own doom and extinction in his subsequent 
flights? 

Not so does Tolstoi, of whom he was proclaimed the suc- 
cessor, handle the promethean spark in his poor downtrod- 
den serfs. Not so did Victor Hugo work out the redemp- 
tion of his remarkable ex-convict. Not so did Dickens lift 
up the poor and oppressed in all the hovels and workshops 
of England. Not so does Dante treat even the souls in 
hades, who dwell "content in fire" because they discern the 
way to Paradise that lies through it. And this is the con- 
demnation of the realist and would-be "Messiahs" of to-day 
who take up the cause of the outcast and the unfortunate 
whom perhaps society's blind and brutal forces have made 
what they are, that they steal their last chance to placate 
human help and sympathy by wiping out every spark of 
humanity, to say nothing of divinity, within them and leav- 
ing them to no better nature than that of the beast that 
perisheth. And that too when in the fluctuations of the 
social and economic systems of the hour, all the lines of 
rank and class are continually shifting — when the tramp at 
the door may be, perchance, the Varsity boy out on a vaca- 
tion job, when Gorky himself was educated and inspired 



112 The Gospel of Despair 

by a cook, and the liU/arus of to-tlay is more than liable to 
bo the Dives of to-uiorrow. 

Indeed the plaint of hopeless degradation anywhere, com- 
ing either from oppressed or oppressor, is unwarranted in a 
world of free will and the innnanent spirit of the divine 
throbbing in all being. Especially should one who has 
proven the power of Godlike will to break through even 
Russian bands and bars, be slow to preach the gospel of 
despair and negation to his struggling brethren. And, 
above all, should he halt at the awful mistake of putting 
them beyond the pale of human brotherhood and writing 
them, in all the colors of beasts and demons, as "Creatures 
Who Have Been Men." God himself put no such brand 
as that upon even the head of Cain. It was to save him 
from becoming a vagabond and a fugitive that he set the 
mark in his forehead. ''Lest any finding him should kill 
him," runs the tender sentence, and why, then, are men and 
prophets setting such brands upon their fellows that noth- 
ing but killing them on sight seems left in the case? Un- 
less, indeed, they can put the stamp of the brotherhood 
upon them in some way, however blurred, begrimed or dis- 
figured by woe or crime it may be, there is little use in go- 
ing down into the abyss or coming up from the abyss to 
spread the story of the lost and fallen. 

The greatest of the reformers have ever held that the 
human soul can never wholly shed the fragrance of the para- 
dise from which it has been expelled, and certainl}' it is in 
the strength of tluit belief alone that any intelligent effort 
can be brought to bear upon either class or individual from 
whom that fragrance seems to have fled. That not all re- 
formers or writers know how to discern it, and in their 
blindness make fearful havoc of the cause or class they un- 
dertake to speak for, may be good and sufficient reason 



Tlie Gospel of Despair 113 

why even a shoemaker should leave his last to come out and 
arrest the general tendency to knock a man down in order 
to save him. The sorriest of life's unfortunates may have 
a remnant of pride left to suffer by such a process, and 
the intelligent laborer at the shop, like tiie intelligent hus- 
bandman with the hoe, may object to being pictured as 
"A thing that neither feels nor thinks." 



ENVIRONMENT 

NEXT to heredity, environment is the grand boon to 
the problem hunter. Everything occult that can not 
be resolved into some atavistic wonder or mystery can be 
dumped into the deep well of environment, to be fished for 
by every truth seeker. Moreover, environment is an avail- 
able force for the individual to conjure by. Heredity, like 
damnation by election, is a power beyond him; but en- 
vironment, like free will, can be thrown in to save him. No 
one can get away from his grandfather, but who is obliged 
to sit down in the vicinity of Mount Pelee.? That we all 
do it in one way or another is a defect that is in ourselves, 
not in our stars. 

When God turned man out of Eden because the place had 
become dangerous and alien to him, he showed him what 
manner of wisdom and care he should exercise in choos- 
ing his environment, a.nd gave him the whole wide earth for 
that choice. Nevertheless, if there is a forbidden tree or 
sociable devil to be found anywhere, it is directly there 
that the ordinary mortal will plant himself and his garden. 
And as for the alien, the unpropitious atmosphere, con- 
sider how persistently the excellent of the earth will drop 
themselves into it and stick. One of the commonest laments 
we hear uttered over thwarted lives is that, under other con- 
ditions or surroundings, the individual might have been 
great. What business, then, had he not to hunt those con- 
ditions, or, with the sagacity of even the common spider, 
tear up the web that proved unfit for him? 

114 



Environment 115 

Nothing, intleed, in all creation is so dull as man in cling- 
ing to a poor situation. Even the flowers of the field in- 
sist upon their own soil and air, and what some one calls 
"the ancestral remedy of flight" is known to all the animal 
kingdom. Only man will drop into a wholly black and bar- 
ren corner and plod on there forever. Indirectly, too, the 
very eff'orts of his higher teachers abet him in the folly. 
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven 
of hell," he is loftily reminded, regardless of the fact that 
in a heaven all made for it the mind could go on to yet 
grander achievements than denying its environment. It 
may be great to rise above one's surroundings, however op- 
pressive they are, but that is when there is no chance to get 
away from them. While there is a loophole of escape left, 
sagacity is shown in finding it. It is only when you can 
not run away from your troublesome neighbors, your cred- 
itors, or perhaps even your creaky-boot husband that it be- 
comes really brilliant to sit down and look them into thin 
air, and let your own mortal, or immortal, mind fill the 
landscape. 

"Submission to what people call their lot is simply ig- 
noble," says that delightful Elizabeth, and it is the crown- 
ing lesson of that garden experiment in environment which 
showed her that bread and butter which is "devoid of charm 
in a drawing room" becomes "ambrosia eaten under a tree." 
To find the place where your bread and butter lot can take 
on ambrosial flavor is the nice secret of life and happiness 
for people who are made subtly susceptible to every Avind 
that blows or odor that floats through the moist airs of 
spring. Not till science can more effectually reduce the 
world to "will and idea" can mortals afford to ignore those 
mighty influences of "sense and outward things" which play 
upon them almost unawares, turning joy to sorrow, or sor- 



116 Environment 

row to jo J by some passing of a cloud fleet o'er the rose of 
dawn, or trickle of a sunbeam through the chill dark of a 
deep woods. 

Poets and musicians and finely strung natures every- 
where feel most deeply this influence of the external, but 
that the most phlegmatic are not insensible to it many a 
lesson of daily life and history reveals to us. But recently 
a sad story ran through the newspapers of an aged couple, 
who after years of sorrow, wandered back to the home of 
their first youth and love, a little vine-wreathed cottage by 
the sea, that had been their bridal bower. Here they hoped 
to bury in the tender associations of the place the terrible 
losses and bereavements that in their later life had come to 
them. But, alas ! they had forgotten Dante's famous lines, 
"There is no sorrow like remembering a happy time in mis- 
ery," and soon the}'^ found the place, with its fltting ghosts 
of lost delight, so insupportable that they deliberately killed 
themselves and were found lying dead together in their 
bridal chamber. 

It may not be great, it may not be heroic, but to run 
away from memories, and from sorrows, and bereavements, 
is sometimes the only way to endure them, or escape "the 
death in life of days that are no more." Nor is it wholly 
true, either, that it is but to change the place and not the 
pain that the flight is made, for new scenes and new associa- 
tions affect the soul in spite of itself and in a wider sense 
tlian the old poet intended, it stands approved that he who 
fights in the battle of life "and runs away will live to fight 
another day." Adjustment to one's environment, adapta- 
tion of the internal to the external, has long been declared 
a law of life, but how could there be any progressive being 
save in the changing environment for the changing and en- 
larging creature? The poet's invocation, "Build thee more 



Environment 117 

stately mansions, O, my soul, as the swift seasons roll," 
has a temporal as well as spiritual significance, and the 
love man has for beautifying and enriching his home, as 
his intellectual needs increase, is directly in the line of all 
human progress. 

"Another da}', another way," runs Leife's definition of 
progress, and with all tlie lurking sarcasm in it it breathes 
the principle of true growth. Almost any change is better 
than no change at all in a state that falls short of per- 
fection. Even love can almost be forgiven its fickle and 
fluctuating ways, considering that it finds nothing perfect 
to fasten itself upon here. It is well, however, that men 
should fling it flowers, and smiles, and rosy offerings, and 
if they would but keep it in the growing light of such en- 
vironment it might live a little longer, even in earth's alien 
atmosphere. It is too often for lack of its vital breath of 
beauty, sunshine and gladness that it languishes under our 
dun skies. So long as lovers can keep the glow of en- 
thusiasm, winsomeness and song alive for it, they can take 
almost any other liberties with it they please. It is when 
it comes to heaviness, "jar and fret" that "love is made a 
vain regret." Say what you will, too, of its ethereal and 
exalted nature, environment does count with it, at least 
among creatures of a material world. 

Love in a hut, with water and a crust, 
Is, Love forgive us ! cinders, ashes, dust, 

cries Keats, and there is too much truth in it to warrant 
the building of much romance on such a combination. It is 
a truth, too, that points the final lesson upon the power 
of environment, for if love can not overcome it nothing else 
can. "I am going a long way," says sad King Arthur, when 
royal life and love had failed him. 



118 Environment 

To tlie island-valley of Avilion, that lies, 
Deep meadow'd, happy, fair, with orchard lawns, 
And bowery hollows, crown'd with summer sea, 
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound. 

It may not be given to all sufferers to hunt the island- 
valley of Avilion to cure their wounds. But at least they 
need not plant themselves beside all manner of smoky vol- 
canoes and rumbling cities and wait till the eruption is upon 
them before they take to their heels and fly. 



THE RIDDLE OF LIFE 

SOME 800 years ago one of the gentlest scholars who 
ever wrestled with the darkness of the Middle Ages died 
sorrowing, because he "had to leave unsolved the nature of 
the human soul." Curiously enough, this learned Anselm 
believed that he possessed the ability to unravel it, with which 
those coming after him might not be endowed. Emphati- 
cally, the latter part of his surmise was realized. For, 
though the poor soul was torn to tatters by the dialecticians 
and the theologians of the scholastic period, no ray of light 
was evolved as to its true nature. However, the mind was 
set free to speculate about it, and to this day the brilliant 
and futile work goes on through all branches of thought and 
philosophy. Indeed, it is the very problem of the soul and 
the mysteries of life that circle around it that keep all the 
currents of thought astir about us, and it is impossible to 
imagine what would have become of all our writers if the 
good Anselm had given it away. One could wish that he 
might have achieved the desired work, for it seems probable 
that we shall never have a happy world to live in till we 
know all about it. 

The riddle of existence is the thing which humanity seems 
least able to endure, and the unsolved mystery of that "awful 
soul that dwells in clay" impresses itself in saddening lines 
upon everything in creation that our eyes rest upon. 

And thus it shall ever be, so long as we know not life's 
secret." Even though that secret might be "monstrous" the 
knowledge of it would be a relief from the pains and fears 

119 



180 Tilt' HidJh' of Lift- 

of iguorjiiu'o. '1\) walk '\u darkness !i}ipoars to be the liard- 
est lot the gods have visited upon men, and to submit himself 
to the limitations of his Hnite knov, ledi^-e, the one thing which 
the human philosopher seems unable to compass. 

liike the souls that dwelt "content in fire" because they 
saw the meaning of it, the burden of all human pain would 
be endurable, if but the mystery of it could be unraveled. 
Is it strange then that great souls and nunds of all ages 
have given themselves to the attempted solution of it? 

In truth, it might not be if any or all of their efforts could 
show one step of progress in that direction. But with the 
best lights of all time declaring to us again and again that 
the problem is absolutely insoluble by any effort of human 
reason, can anything be madder than the manner in which 
humanity goes on repeating the vain endeavor to make it 
out and beating its head against a stone ^vall to no purpose? 
It may be that no intelligent being can rest content at the 
heart of a mystery without some effort to unravel it, but 
how long should it take the intelligent being to learn that a 
mystery is insoluble and the path of peace and happiness 
lies outside the wrestle with it? 

The happiest heart that ever beat 

Was in some quiet breast 
That found the common daylight sweet 

xVnd left to heaven the rest, 

says the poet, and that is much the state of the case, and 
any one who goes to nature and the bee for his philosoph}' 
will find it out. 

The bee shows no pangs nor misgivings in sporting or 
toiling out his brief hour amid the flowers or honey cells 
and turning over his work to his gay successor, and if 
we are to consider his ways and be wise why should we not 



The Riddle of Life 121 

accept that crowning lesson against "the pitiful weighing of 
fate" and the sad discussion of ills which some of our own 
poets have found in it? 

When tlie bee community arrives at the height of its 
riches and prosperity it promptly abandons its wealth and 
its home to the next generation, and "this act," we are told, 
"be it conscious or unconscious, undoubtedly passes the limit 
of human morality." But why? Do not all the genera- 
tions of men toil and vanish and another enter into their 
labors? It must be because of the "heroic" and unquestion- 
ing spirit with which the bee submits itself to its destiny. 

It does not, as Walt Whitman expresses it, "sweat or 
whine about its condition" or rend the skies with the eternal 
repetitions of the vain question why. It takes the Septem- 
ber sacrifice of its "thrice happy home" or city as cheerily as 
the summer rearing of it amid the flowers and running 
waters. Perchance it perceives the same law of life and good 
running through both of them, but, at any rate, it loses no 
joy in the summer sun for fear of the September wandering. 

And this, indeed, is the worst misfortune of the persistent 
human struggle with unfathomable fate, that it loses the 
joy of the sunshine in the consuming endeavor to penetrate 
the shadows. Nay, even to get at the heart of the rose, it 
will heedlessly scatter its fair petals to the breeze. Like 
Carlyle's small brandishers of the torch of science, it wastes 
its time studying how the apple got in the dumpling, while 
the unquestioning banqueter eats dumpling, apple, crust and 
all, and finds it good — which, indeed, is the only way to know 
anything about it. Life, says Emerson, is a succession of 
riddles or lessons, which must be lived to be understood. 
All the speculations of the philosophers are vain and idle. 
The only key to the riddle is the key of experience, and each 
one must apply it to the successive chambers of being for 



122 The Riddle of Life 

himself. It may be that the good Anselm has solved the 
problem of the soul by this time, and again it may be that 
he is still at work on it. But, at any rate, it is eternally 
true, 

That of the myriads who 

Before us passed the door of darkness through, 
Not one returns to tell us of the road. 
Which to discover we must travel, too. 



CONCERNING SLANDER 

IT is one of the most curious things in human history 
that people who can not get at the real motive in a single 
act of their fellow-beings should set themselves up in judg- 
ment upon them, even in the most secret and sacred affairs 
of their lives and unquestionably the love of scandal, the 
desire to stir a sensation, lies at the root of a great deal of 
it. If sensationalism and slander were to be wiped out of 
all decent life and journalism, the result would be almost 
incalculable in the uplifting of society. And this not half 
so much through any redemption wrought for the victim as 
for the perpetrator of the sensational story or gossip. In- 
deed, it is to this latter subject of the evil that the new 
psychology directs its first attention. It is the slanderer 
and not the slandered who is the patient for its treatment. 
Nor is it true, scientifically speaking, that any creature at 
any time was ever "done to death by slanderous tongues." 
It was some lack of sustaining strength or poise in his own 
rectitude that let in the "poisoned darts." "The mind, con- 
scious of rectitude, laughs to scorn the falsehood of report," 
said Ovid, and it was a very wise as well as good man who 
said when told of a vile calumny concerning him, "I will 
act so that nobody will believe it." 

Nothing really is more absurd than for an innocent man 
to worry over any slander. It is the poor slanderer who 
needs to worry and to move all the philanthropists of the 
earth to rush after and help him, for by every law of truth 
and being he has turned the currents of his life into the 

123 



124 Concerning Slander 

narrows of the pit, and secured for himself a future, a karma, 
that either philosopher or theologian must shudder to look 
upon. No sinful act of man more surely than this breaks 
that ladder of love on which he climbs to the light in drawing 
his brother after him. It is significant to note how even time 
itself brings the sequence of his deed to bear in its very 
colors upon the head of the slanderer. In a little town of 
the West, not long since, a very epidemic of scandal broke 
out among the respected citizens. Reputations withered at 
a breath and character was no safeguard against the back- 
yard gossip. But the wave passed, and the assailed parties 
managed to pull through alive. Curiously enough, how- 
ever, in the homes of the slanderers developed shortly the 
very evils they had sought to fasten upon others, and mothers 
and sisters found through the fierce obloquy cast upon their 
own dear ones, how fearfully in seeking to condemn others 
they had condemned themselves. 

It is not always that retribution follows so closely on the 
steps of wrong, nor can any one yet say what subtle influ- 
ences in the mental atmosphere may set a suggested evil to 
developing itself in susceptible quarters. But that the deed 
somehow returns upon the head of the doer is an inevitable 
law of life and a dart hurled at the soul and character of 
a fellow being is the worst arrow of destruction that one 
can let loose to cross his path at any stage of the way. 
Whether it is aimed in malice or in idle gossip, he must 
meet it at Phillipi and pay the full price of it. It is for 
him therefore and not the innocent victim, whose cause is 
safe with heaven, that the safeguards of restraint and fair 
speaking should be set up, and when the better thought and 
psychology of the day succeed in convincing men of this 
cardinal truth, slanders and yellow journalism will no doubt 
die a natural death. 



Concerning Slander 125 

Of course, it may be said that to tell the truth about a 
man is not to slander him ; yet when one considers that it 
is little more than the dangerous half truth that can be 
known to the outside party it is safest, perhaps, to let un- 
pleasant truths take care of themselves and work out their 
own dark penalty or sequence in its due place, as they always 
do. Besides, it is much, as one of the great ones gone has 
intimated in the case, "If you take temptation into account 
who is to say that he is better than his neighbor?" "I have 
never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than 
myself," says Montaigne, and while that remains true of a 
man whose moral precepts and lofty philosophy have gone 
into every corner of the earth, and been translated into all 
tongues, would it not be well for common mortals to con- 
sider what monster is within themselves ? 

Really, too, if the spice of the matter is the thing desired, 
nothing in any outside sinner could begin to equal the bub- 
bling of the witches' cauldron of mischief and temptation in 
man's own soul, nor give a hint of the moral crises he goes 
through in the secret places of his life. If he does not find 
it well therefore to make a sensation out of his own coquetry 
with the devil, why should he call his neighbor in for the 
Mepistophelian drama? The very fact that man aims so 
neatly to conceal his own shortcomings is reason enough why 
he should be slow to uncover his neighbor's. Let him that 
is without sin cast the first stone is, of course, the divine 
principle that probes to the heart of the whole matter, and 
it leaves little margin for trading upon human weaknesses, 
either for sensation or example. To resolve man's virtues 
into something worth exploiting is really the principle for 
true journalism and ethics, and we ought to be far enough 
along in the moral graces to find some attraction in good- 
ness without an army of stage villains to set it off. 



WOES OF THE MISUNDERSTOOD 

AFTER all, neither wisdom nor destiny amount to much 
unless human beings can manage somehow to under- 
stand each other. Considering the poverty of our means of 
communication with each other, the plain Scripture rule of 
thinking no evil is the only one to sa,ve us. 

Our language not only conceals thought, but it manages 
to conceal about every decent principle and aspiration that 
lurks within us. It tangles up the best of friends and has 
parted lovers that not all the blast of time or adverse fate 
could sever. Half the crimes and wars of the Christian 
centuries rage about the words and teachings of the Christ, 
and, although nineteen centuries of scholars have been trying 
to make out what they mean, nobody is sure of it yet. 
Hamlet is a mooning maniac to one sage critic, and a deep 
and subtle scholar and philosopher to s^nother. At the uni- 
versities one professor presents Macbeth as an essentially 
good, brave and heroic soldier, ruined by his thoroughly 
fiendish wife, and another as a poor coward in both deed and 
purpose, hung like a millstone around the neck of a woman 
who would have been one of the greatest characters in his- 
tory without him. 

Nearly every writer who puts pen to paper is damned for 
what he never knew he was saying, and keys, commentators 
and women's clubs give themselves to reading into the rem- 
nant of the saved something that they never dreamed of say- 
ing. The "June baby" who cried "such a much" over her 
apronful of flowers or kittens is about as neat an expositor 

126 



Woes of the Misunderstood 127 

of the tangle as recent examples furnish. And yet when 
people open their mouths and speak it is fair to believe that 
they mean something, and unless their actions belie it, some- 
thing decent. There really ought to be such a thing as 
character that could stand despite all the confusion of 
tongues that could be brought to bear upon it. 

A lover and man of the quill, gone on a journey recently, 
sent his love a letter that seemed to write him one of the 
"gay deceivers," against whom all her Byronic favorites 
had warned her. Being of an explosive nature, she was 
about to create an earthquake that would engulf both love 
and the lover, when she bethought herself that this wandering 
Ulysses had been rather a stanch devotee at her shrine for 
some eight or ten years and it was curious that he should 
undergo so tremendous a sea change in the space of a few 
weeks. Hence she gave him the benefit of the doubt and a 
chance to explain himself. And, lo ! it turned out that he 
meant just the opposite of what he said and was overwhelmed 
at the misunderstanding. Since which time these two intel- 
lectual and long familiar creatures are using a kind of letter 
writer's manual to preserve themselves. Before using, how- 
ever, they might have been a light to the world if from their 
neat experience they could have taught human beings to 
believe in each other in spite of our idiotic tongue. 

Really, "to understand is to forgive" in nearly all our 
blundering offenses against each other, and if our words and 
theories could be sifted down to some clear and accurate 
expression of what we verily do think and mean, half our 
disagreements in creed, code and principle would disappear 
at a breath. 

Some day, perhaps, there will arise, as Whitman sus- 
pected, "the true son of God singing his songs," speaking 
his language, and then they who are not already lost in a 



128 Woes of the Misunderstood 

babel of tongues will be able to unveil themselves to each 
other without fear of a policeman, a heresy trial or a ban 
from the insapient. But, meantime, it remains true, as 
Macaulay observed, that the "flashes of silence" are the 
most "delightful" part of any conversation, and certainly 
the safest. The picture of Carlyle dismissing Tennyson 
after an afternoon visit with the eager invitation, "Come 
again, Alfred, we have had such a fine chat," when neither 
of them had uttered a syllable during the entire interview, 
is one of the most refreshing, as well as significant ones, in 
all literature. That it requires two well-attuned souls to 
accomplish it is no reason why even lesser creatures might 
not taste such bliss, for who knows what kindred spirits in 
any circle might not be beating in unison with our own if 
we could keep still long enough to find it out ? 

It was noted recently that in their ideas of diplomacy in 
conducting a campaign the man said "don't talk" and the 
woman "talk ceaselessly." The end in view is the measure 
of the wisdom in either course, for if it is to befuddle an 
adversary what better can one do than to pelt him with 
words, words, words, and the discomfiture to which poor 
tongue-tied man has been driven by such a policy ought to 
teach him the value of it in the ruder warfare of life. But 
when it comes to the heights, the spirit altitudes and com- 
munication, words are too gross. It is about as that poet- 
seer tells us, "When the finer feelings are touched one can 
only have music or silence." Writers like Maeterlinck in 
all the grace of poetry and art have tried to put us in 
communication with life and relations be^^ond the bounds of 
sense, elemental, universal, and yet through the necessity of 
speaking in terms of sense the grossest meanings and ideas 
have been attributed to them. How then, shall the ungifted 
be expected to save themselves in their dull grapple with 



Woes of the Misunderstood 129 

the indiscretions of speech? It is a tender legend which 
tells us that the tears of the recording angel wash out all 
the evil or the unfortunate words of the good man, and if 
some kind lord of life would teach the recording angels of 
earth to do likewise this world would be a better place to 
live in. As it is, the very goodness of the saints is held on 
the tip of the tongue and goes down with a misinterpreted 
phrase or symbol. 



OTHER PEOPLE'S ILLS 

A PROMINENT business man recently sprained his 
back by some rash stroke in athletics and came home 
to his wife more or less disabled for life. When her sympa- 
thy grew tearful he assured her that there was scarcely a 
man of his acquaintance not largely the worse for some such 
physical injury. This seemed to comfort them both, and 
the disaster to the spinal column became a secondary con- 
sideration. 

The philosophy is as old as humanity, and about as curi- 
ous. Why it should comfort a man with a broken back to 
know that another man's back is broken it is not easy to 
say. But apparently it does, though heaven is not the 
legitimate outcome of such a philosophy. Indeed, Sweden- 
borg seems to be its true interpreter when he tells us that 
the good Lord, out of his tender mercy, provided "the hells" 
where, as it were, people of broken backs and lame limbs in 
morals could get together and enjoy what Plutarch calls 
the comfort of society in shipwreck. Meantime to educate 
us up to it is the part of much of the instruction offered 
from the very nursery in the line of comforting reflections 
upon the sins and miseries of other people. 

That we are all poor sinners is a relief that theology itself 
oJfFers to the strain of that deeper cry, be merciful to me 
a sinner, though nothing in all the history of ethics can 
show that one human soul has been helped by it. Poets and 
philosophers of course of all ages have tried to make suf- 
fering as the common lot the bases of individual endurance, 

130 



Other People's Ills 131 

though how the grandeur of tliat endurance was borne out by 
it none of tlicm could declare to us. Plin}' beneath the belch- 
ing fires of Vesuvius tells us that he found his "miserable 
consolation" in the belief that it was the end of the world 
and all mankind was perishing with him, and in their secret 
souls all these great ones know that it is but a "miserable 
consolation" which can come to any creature out of the 
sufferings of others. That it is closely akin to pleasure in 
those sufferings some of the more honest of them would seem 
to have made out in their reflections upon our poor mor- 
tality. "I am convinced," said Burke, "that we have a 
degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real mis- 
fortunes and pains of others," and that odious maxim-maker, 
Rochefoucauld, even goes farther and declares that "in the 
adversity of our best friends we always find something which 
is not wholly displeasing to us." 

What more could all Hades ask than that to found its 
hells upon ! And yet it is not an unnatural deduction from 
the accepted principle that misery loves company and finds 
its own ground of endurance in it. Indeed, the fear that 
our friends through too much prosperity will get out of the 
reach of us and our misfortunes is the gentlest explanation 
that is made of the hideous maxim, and the desire to bind 
them to us even in the bond of common woes is not largely 
discountenanced by the philosophers. In truth, community 
in suffering, perhaps in despair of community in joy, is so 
largely a part of poor mortals' demand upon each other 
that scarcely God could come to earth without declaring 
himself a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Pains, 
wrongs and all manner of ills are borne patiently if a whole 
community shares them together, and age, decay, death and 
oblivion are to be held tolerable, because, as one of our own 
poets puts it, "All that breathe shall share the destiny." 



132 Other People's Ills 

The crowning bitterness of life everywhere grows out of its, 
inequalities, and half the fires of war, anarchy and rebellion 
are kindled less for the pain men suffer, which in default of 
contrast they do not so much consider, as for fury of the 
fact that others refuse to bear it with them — push out of 
the common lot to what they deem the uncommon. 

Some soul in fire that could look up and honestly rejoice 
that another soul was lying at peace in Abraham's bosom, 
and scorn the consolation that one creature was left to suf- 
fer with him, might revolutionize the whole scheme of purga- 
torial pains in earth or hades and show the angels a height 
of greatness that they are not competent to attain. Of 
course, teachers and mystics of different ages have sighted 
this glory afar off, and some of the blessed martyrs made a 
fair grasp for it, but one person alone really descended into 
hell to teach men the universal love that alone could com- 
pass it. For love and love alone is the secrt of rising above 
any consolation in others' afflictions which the odiously dis- 
cerning philosophers find in us, and every true household is a 
proof of it. Imagine a son comforting himself over a frac- 
tured spine because his father or brother was similarly 
afflicted ! Picture a fond mother finding consolation in the 
decay of her charms through beholding that a beautiful 
daughter was fading with her. Try Rochef aucauld's maxim 
on friends who had reached the Damon and Pythias stage 
of affection. Everywhere it is the poverty and dearth of 
love which that consolation of a common lot in sorrow builds 
upon, and one touch of the fire of a true affection shivers it 
at a breath. 

Let universal love "lie like a shaft of light across the land" 
and all men's good be each man's care, and there will be small 
comfort in knowing that pains and bruises are spread over 



other People's IUh 133 

tlu! \vliol(.' race. Kven that incentive to courage wliich is 
supposed to lodge in the idea that if otliers have suffered and 
endured vou can, is a small matter beside the strength of 
treading the wine press alone and rejoicing that others know 
nothing of its crimson deeps. Indeed, the truth of the mat- 
ter is that it is one of our greatest misfortunes, instead of 
gains, that we are so tangled up in other people's lives that 
we can scarcely have the toothache without setting a whole 
family in commotion. To find a place where we could have 
it out with ourselves when our souls faltered or our limbs 
failed would bo much better than calling in a whole army 
of the halt and maimed to suffer with us. Tlie lad in the 
mourners' seat who reproved the boy behind him for crying 
when it was "none of his funeral" hada measure of the right 
spirit in him after all. Sympatliy may be well enough for 
the sympathizer, but strength to abide without it is better 
for the sufTerer. 

Most of all the form of consolation which looks upon the 
ten thousand woes and evils that men bring upon themselves 
as but a part of the common lot, as it were appointed of 
heaven, is the thing that blights. Heaven never asks any 
man to fracture his anatomy at either work or play, and if 
he does, it is small business to charge it to the general order 
and so pervert the kindlier ends of being. Pain is, as all 
the teachers tell us, the child of wrong doing somewhere, 
and to dispose of it as far as possible by right doing is 
certainly better than to declare it universal and take con- 
solation in the worst form of it. Really joy is the only 
thing that men can afford to dwell upon as common, and it 
is significant that it was when the woman in the Bible had 
found, not lost, her piece of silver that she is made to call in 
the friends and neighbors to sympathize with her. It is due 



134< Other People's Ills 

to our misconception of life and its true bonds that sym- 
pathy and the "common lot" mean ever something dolorous, 
and that people scarcely think of them save in connection 
with some misfortune or damage to the original. 



TELLING THE TRUTH 

THE story of Jeanie Deans will have to be rewritten. 
The twentieth century has no use for the one-ideaed 
puritan maiden who would swear away a loved one's life 
rather than tell an inspirational lie to save it. The case 
has been tried in the criminal court of a large city, and not 
one member of the grand jury could be found willing to 
indict the trembling sweatheart who swore to a false alibi 
to save the man she loved from the penitentiary. However, 
the ends of justice are satisfied. The man has gone to the 
penitentiary, and, as the lie did not save him, there is no 
danger that a series of lover's perjuries will undermine the 
majesty of the law. The main thing needed in the case is 
a Walter Scott or a Tolstoi to put it in a romance, for if 
there is not a spiritual "resurrection" effected in that poor 
convict's soul through the power of that maiden's love, lie 
and all, then the angels are behind the jurymen in making 
the most of "the greatest thing on earth." When he saw 
his sweetheart sink back pale and trembling before the 
counter-testimony that threatened to expose her, he leaped to 
his feet, runs the record, and shouted aloud that he was 
guilty. Thus giving himself up, argued the jurymen, he 
met the demands of justice and removed any necessity for 
considering the poor girl's testimony. Hence their return 
was "no bill" when the effort came to indict her. 

This closed the last act in the city court-room, but in the 
higher courts of the spirit it looks very much as though some 
new act had just begun. A Hugo or a Tolstoi would cer- 

135 



136 Telling the Truth 

tainly produce a new soul in the hero's case from such a 
life germ, though it were trailed through a hundred prisons 
in the operation, and probably the Great Master of life 
and souls is not behind them. But just what life or litera- 
ture would do with the heroine's case is really another mat- 
ter, and it lies too deep for any surface treatment to dispose 
of. It is certain that Walter Scott kept some eternal truths 
of life and its sequences intact when he refused to let a white- 
souled heroine introduce the black thread of a rank perjury 
into the web of her life. Nevertheless, it shadows her with 
something almost equally as dark when she is made to stand 
up and swear away, so far as her power goes, the life of a 
loved one, to keep her own soul inviolate, and human love 
and reason refuse to believe that such violence done to nature 
and the tender affections can ever turn out a means of grace. 
The real lesson in such monstrous spectacles is to set forth 
the deplorableness of laws and civilizations that can not get 
beyond them. Society is said to be a tissue of falsehood 
from beginning to end, and no wonder when, from the school- 
boy to the court witness, human beings are expected to turn 
state's evidence against their best beloved for the purpose of 
having them put under the rod or the executioner's ax in 
some clumsy form of law and punishment. 

One of the early recollections of a New England boarding 
school life shows a tender maid of sixteen incarcerated for 
seven long days in a dreary chamber, and fed like a jailbird 
on bread and water, allegorically called toast and tea, be- 
cause she refused to betray a favorite schoolmate whom she 
had accidentally seen skip through an open window and go 
off with the "boy tenor" for a stroll in the summer moonlight. 
That she was truthful enough to confess that she knew the 
parties, and loyal enough to insist that she could not betray 
them, was the head and front of her offending. And this 



Telling the Truth 137 

is much the condition of things with many a trembling 
witness who is snapped up to give evidence in different direc- 
tions against friend or lover, with only this deadly difference 
in more serious cases, that refusal to speak means often 
most fatal indorsement of the evidence on the other side. 
Since home discipline has gone into the hands of the children 
instead of the parents, we hear less of brothers and sisters 
being required to give each other over to the rod or torture 
chamber by witness bearing against one another. But for 
how long was that a recognized part of family training and 
policy.'' Not till brilliant humorists like Ingersoll began 
showing parents that standing over puny creatures with a 
club, ready to annihilate them on conviction, was not the 
way to make the sensible child lay bare his soul before them, 
or tell the painful truth about which boy hacked the cherry 
tree. And now that the children have got the club, and 
smash the furniture or hang themselves over the roof if a 
stern look crops out anywhere, it is a courageous parent 
who dares say that his soul's his own. 

Intimidation works to the repression of troublesome facts 
in either child or adult, and when it is brought to bear upoi. 
the finer feelings it is not so strange that some skillful tac- 
tics in "breaking the legs" of injurious truth should be re- 
sorted to. "I speak truth, not so much as I would, but so 
much as I dare," said the high-minded Montaigne, and it is 
a nice commentary upon the state of life and society that 
that should be very much the case with all of us. To tell 
the truth is the natural impulse of the soul. It is the 
danger and calamity that attend it that begin to train the 
innocent-minded child to phase and twist it till often, the 
more intelligent he grows, the more of an adept he becomes 
in the operation. It is the pleasant sophistry of some to 
imagine that they can save themselves from too much com-* 



138 Telling the Tnitli 

pounding AvitJi the father of lies by suppressing the truth, 
while they fail to utter the falsehood. But it is just that that 
society has set itself to outwit most effectually. Like the 
poor girl on the witness stand, to fail to testify against is 
to admit the evidence for the thing that undoes us, and so 
a protective panoply of white lies becomes almost a necessity 
in guarding our most sacred possessions. 

Everywhere, in love, in law, in religion, there is a penalty 
attached to the truth. How many ministers dare speak it 
to any people as their inmost souls behold it.'' How many 
mismated couples dare face it honestly and openly, though 
all their lives become a living lie in consequence.'' What 
cowards in love everywhere do violence to the very life prin- 
ciple of their souls, because the truth is made a costly thing 
for them.'' What scores of Jeanie Deans are hiding the 
slips of recreant loved ones because society knows nothing 
better than to crowd them into pens of contamination, bru- 
tality and ignominy if the slip becomes known.'' Indeed, 
what church, court, government or civilization, the world 
over, has brought itself to the sublime height of dealing 
honestly with life as it is, or making .it possible for other 
than children and fools, as the old adage has it, to tell the 
truth about things as they are.'' The little English lad who 
defined a lie as "an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, but 
a very present help in time of trouble" sized up the whole 
situation. And yet truth is the very central flame that 
feeds the "white radiance of eternity," and to clear the 
path to it the most essential thing for any creatures who 
would reach the eternal hills. To put a premium on lies and 
make martyrs or monsters of those who would speak the 
truth has been too long the world's system of education in 
such matters, and it is certainly a ground of congratulation 
if an}' jurymen in any land look to the motive, and not the 



Telling the Truth 139 

deed, that imperfect human courts themselves impel. Long 
ago a prophet, dreaming, whispered of a day when mercy 
and truth should meet together. It is for that we wait. 
And lieaven grant that it may dawn before the exigencies 
of the present system hurl us all into the "lake that burn- 
eth" through our futile endeavors to connect the two. 



THE TOUCH OF NATURE 

IT is a divine touch in literature which seeks to make all 
life kin to us. To knit the animal world to our own in 
almost human loves and human sympathies, has been the 
work of our most engaging writers, and in stirring the pulse 
of tenderness and respect for all created things, especially 
in the heart of childhood, the work has been a splendid one. 
But, with all respect for the gentle and gifted ones who 
have so happil}^ preserved for us the unities of life in all the 
remotest corners of the kingdom, it is still a regret that for 
any cause or effect they should have been moved to drop 
down the burden of human pain, as well as human pleasure, 
upon the free, glad spirit of the lower world. It was bad 
enough for man to come to that state of higher conscious- 
ness which would fill him with pain, fear and mourning over 
the ordinary processes of nature, or stir his bitterness and 
revenge over the natural workings of that great law of the 
survival of the fittest. But when it comes to tangling br'er 
wolf and brother bear in the heavy and pathetic toils of it, 
the very ends of nature seem turned astray. 

The one great answer to the tremendous problem of suf- 
fering in the animal world, and all the prejang of the 
stronger upon the weaker therein, was that it is not suffer- 
ing in any real human sense ; that the processes of life and 
death go on there with no such jars and wrenches of relations 
and affections, such passions of grief, despair and longing, 
as mark our beautiful "higher intelligence." Yet here are 
our loveliest writers filling our dumb relations with such in- 

140 



The Touch of Nature 141 

tensifications of our mental throes and emotions that, really, 
the beasts at Ephesus become of as pathetically heroic mold 
as the martyrs, and the boy who lamented that one poor 
lion in the arena "didn't have any Christian to eat" was 
entirely in the line of the new relationship. Meantime, too, 
the gladness of the world becomes seriously eclipsed by it, 
and the taste for tragedy is receiving a new impulse in un- 
wonted fields. 

A little lad wlio recently took one of Seton Thompson's 
exquisite books to his Quaker grandmother to read to him 
said sturdily, "Thee knows, grandmother, that the stories 
are all very sad" ; and then the little tragedy lover sat down 
to let his heart bleed over the sorrows and wrongs of poor 
"Wabb" and his heroic journey into the poisonous valley 
of death. This, no doubt, is the effective side of the wonder- 
ful animal books that are bringing all living, creeping or 
crawling things into our closer sympathy, acquaintance and 
fellowship. But for the joy of that companionship, the 
gladsomeness of creatures that could charm us away from 
all the narrow lines of human society and relationship into 
the free, wide air of elemental being, this flinging of the 
weight of "man's mortality" and almost accountability upon 
beast and bird, is rather a dangerous experiment. And if 
it does not end in giving us br'er wolves and grizzly bears 
that lie awake at night and mourn for their sins, we may be 
very thankful. 

The truth is, too, that, with all the playfulness, fun and 
even humor that have been read into the lower animals by 
the genial Uncle Remuses and other authors who have 
claimed them, the half of it has not been told. Some one 
recently suggests that we may be more sport to the playful 
kitten than it can possibly be to us, and it seems very prob- 
able that all the kittenish things in creation have their own 



14)2 The Touch of Nature 

fun over our clumsy efforts to dance after or around them — 
witness, for instance, a sportive colt leading his master a 
coquettish chase over field or meadow, or a sly squirrel or 
rabbit darting from your path when he has tempted you 
within a hand's touch of him. Did you ever really try to 
put salt on a bird's tail, or clap your hand on the saucy 
minnow that flashed toward ^^ou in a secluded bathing place? 
Imagine the mirth of the tuneful mosquito when Swift's 
"forked straddling animal, with bandy legs," lunges vainly 
at him from his distracted couch, or the amusement of the 
myriad-eyed fly when the portly housewife tries to creep up 
behind it with the paper whacker. Consider the humor of 
the bee when he sees a small population of stately bipeds 
performing an impromptu clog dance before his tiny sting, 
or even the pleasure of the butterfly in carrying the urchin, 
with his upturned hat, an airy chase from flower to flower. 

Man is said to be the only animal that laughs, but what 
really is the dog about when he twists his countenance into 
such ungodly contortions to placate you when you try to 
dislodge him from some favorite corner? Even to get hilar- 
iously drunk is not the privilege of pleasure-loving man 
alone, for does not the sly prairie dog go out and "fill up" 
on the juice of an intoxicating weed and come home "half 
seas over" in the morning? Solely for this, says the natural- 
ist, does he take the owl to house with him and guard his 
entrance, and the rattlesnake to make sure of his bed. 
Wliat must be his contempt for the man who will "do the 
deed and regret it," or spoil the insane delight of it with 
the Keeley cure? Everything in all creation is free to the 
animal revelers, and they are the true "scientists" who live 
up to the belief that nothing in their maker's world can 
harm them. Shall man, then, encumber them in the weight 
of his conscious fears, and qualms, and stolen knowledge of 



The Touch of Nature 143 

good and evil ? Shall he fill the happy creatures of the day 
and hour, the glad spirits of wood and sky, with his canker- 
ing hates and bitter memories, his long-cherished revenges 
and suicidal abuses of "restful death"? Nay, then, let 
Shelley tell him — 

What objects are the fountains 

Of their happy strains. 
What fields, or waves, or mountains, 

What shapes of sky or plain, 
What love of their own kind, what ignorance of pain. 

It is enough for us poor mortals to worry through the 
golden years, cowards of conscience, slaves of fear, victims 
of idle tears and vain regrets, of deadly hates and passions. 
But let the birds and beasts be free to roam the wide crea- 
tion and drink the intoxicating draught of life in ignorance 
of pain ; and die at nature's close, aye, even fall at the 
hunter's dart, untouched by any thought of wrong or 
malevolence in all the universe. The sting of death is sin, 
we are told by the good book, and to these creatures, inno- 
cent of sin, death, even at each other's hands, may have no 
real terrors. Certainly, their joyous life and song in the 
constant presence of it would lead us to perceive, as the 
poet tells us, that 

They of death must deem 
Things more true and deep 
Than we mortals dream. 

It is to share their song, not burden them with our 
sighing, that the companionship of such free creatures 
should be sought. It is the heaviness of our souls, "the 
weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin," that keeps 
us out of our best inheritance of strength or talent. 



lii The 'Vouch of \' (it lire 

ToiU'h mo Imir I ho <;la«.lnoss 

Tliat thy brain must know, 
Siioh harmonious madness 

From my lips would How, 
Tho world would listen then, as I am listening now, 

cries Shelley to his skylark, and it is as true as the subtlest 
truth of art. We never shall achieve our highest in life or 
labor till we catch the "clear, keen joyance" of the skylark's 
note. 



PRACTICAL SIDE OF BROTHERLY LOVE 

RELIGION is not, altruism, we arc told ; humanitarian- 
ism can not save the soul. So there it is. Just when 
we hud hegun to hope that brotherly love should continue 
and the good deed done unto the least of the brethren was 
done unto the Master, it appears that the whole thing is 
wrong. It is settling up a Ininian love for a divine love, and 
leaving tlie debt to the individual soul unpaid. Worse still, 
it is exalting materialism and creature comfort above that 
spirituality and triumph over the flesh which are supposed 
to go with bare feet and serge garments. And, above all, 
it is a cant and a hypocrisy on the very face of it, for no 
human being ever did or could love his brother as he loved 
himself, or really love him at all unless he developed a few 
qualities on his own account worth loving. 

Reduced to its last analysis, therefore, altruism pure and 
simple is nonexistent, and the people who are condemning it 
are passing judgment upon something which they have never 
seen — a feat not unknown to solons of all ages. "We run 
about," says one writer, "without either worship or pra^'er, 
declaring noisily that we want to see everybody happy, and 
do not care what sacrifices we make to that end. But we 
make no sacrifices, fill no voids, console no wounded hearts 
and do nothing to knit men together for any end greater 
than conviviality." And on this sham image of human love 
and brotherhood the teachers are passing judgment, and 
declaring the long dream of the ages and the life principle of 
all religions, from Brahma to Jesus, which made men one in 

145 



146 Practical Side of Brotherly Love 

the divine love and family, each ministering to the other, 
a failure or a myth. 

"Sirs, by your own confession you have never seen altru- 
ism. You are miles and miles away from human brother- 
hood. How do you know it is not religion? How can you 
say that if properly encouraged to show its head, the thing 
you deprecate might not only prove a religion, but, like Ben 
Adam's name in the angel reckoning, lead all the rest." To 
say that it is impossible is to say that all the sacred teachers 
of the earth have been giving themselves for an idea, that 
the Master himself laid down his life for a delution, and, 
in "giving men an example that they should do as he had 
done," set the world forever on a false trail and merely 
raised a mirage in life's desert. There must be something 
in this idea of a love surpassing the love of self that comes 
in to exalt humanity, or the poets, seers and philosophers, 
as well as the sacred teachers of all ages, have gone astray, 
and, before the new wave in the old thought is quite swept 
from the planet one would really like to know what it is. 

To make it easy a young and prominent minister recently 
assured his hearers that it was not a matter of loving every 
brother who got his name on the church rolls. You don't 
do that and 3'^ou can't, and it is not demanded of you, he 
added, and it seemed as though a great thrill of satisfaction 
and relief passed through the large audience. And then 
he quoted various tender passages of Scripture, touching 
ungodly men, to show, ver}' much as the "Goblin boy" has 
it, that "religious cussing" could be done "according to 
the Bible." In short, that brotherly love, inside or outside 
of the church, meant little more than following the instincts 
of the human heart in the direction of the fair and pleasing 
everywhere. Meantime the unpleasing and the unblest, who 
is to go after Judas, Simon Magus, and the great company 



Practical Side of Brotherly Love 147 

of the unlovely and the foresworn whom Dante so conven- 
iently chains up in the lowest pit of hell, "according to the 
Scripture." There is apparently not a power in earth or 
heaven so far as yet made known to man to make brothers 
of any of them. More significant still is the company of 
the Dr. Fell order, at the other end of the pendulum. Noth- 
ing in all the creeds or brotherhoods has carried man beyond 
the familiar old doggerel: 

"I do not love thee. Doctor Fell ; 
The reason why I can not tell," etc. 

Only the blessed little intermediates, the children of the 
slums and the Ghetto, have walked straight into our hearts 
so that we love them, even to the extent of giving them 
"ruffles for their shirts," and that is mainly because the 
authors have fitted them out with such enticing mental frills 
in introducing them. No one can fairly say that he has 
grasped this brotherhood problem because he goes slumming, 
or takes some Maxime Gorky to his bosom. All this empha- 
sizes the minister's idea that it is not simply being on the 
church or human roll that insures the love of a brother, but 
presenting the qualities and attractions meet for it — which 
certainly other than bodies of divinity could make out for 
us with little trouble. The altruism which sacrifices self for 
other selves, individual or collective, can not legitimately 
therefore be put forward as a step toward universal brother- 
hood in any sense of knitted hearts and sympathies. Some- 
tliing wider than this must cover a field which contains an- 
tagonisms and difference so great as to make even the touch 
of nature, in many cases, hard to find. Really to allow men 
the right to their differences, the rejection of the alien ties, 
and yet love them to the extent of having mercy on them, 
might come nearer to the help needed, and perhaps included 



148 Practical Side of Brotherly Love 

in the Master^s thought when he said "Go ye and learn what 
that meaneth ; I will have mercy and not sacirlSce." In any 
case, to get as far in the love of humanity as to have charity 
and tolerance for brothers and non-brothers alike would be 
an immense stride in the direction of the millennium. It is 
curious, indeed, to hear so much loud talk of sacrifice and 
self- giving for the good of others, when just a decent regard 
for them, a simple attitude of common kindness toward them, 
would be all required. It is precisely as the poet sees it : 

So many gods, so many creeds. 
So many paths that wind and wind, 
While just the art of being kind 
Is all the sad world needs. 

When men can love each other to the extent of being kind 
even to "the unthankful and to the evil" they will have a 
right indeed to put their humanitarianism on a footing 
with religion, and it would be like denying the Master to rise 
up and say that the church would have none of it. In a 
brilliant article in the Nouville Revue on the "Secret of 
Human Happiness," M. Novikoff declares that the object of 
socialism — to give to each inhabitant of the planet an ex- 
istence worthy of man — is the beginning and end of all polit- 
ical wisdom, while its means, collectivism, is pure madness. 
Thus may it be with the whole brotherhood idea. An ex- 
istence worthy of man may be the true debt man owes to 
man, and, that paid, brotherhoods and social orders could 
take care of themselves. To count nothing human as for- 
eign to you, or lacking in a claim to your fair treatment and 
respect, is an old teaching in human brotherhood, which no 
new science, socialism or religion has been able to supplant. 
Nor can any authority logically declare the whole system 
void till that divine idea has taken root in human society. 



Practical Side of Brotherly Love 149 

If such humanitarianism could not save the soul it could at 
least project it well along in the path of that eternal law 
and justice whose "seat is the bosom of God," whose "voice 
the harmony of the world." 



DREAMS AND VISIONS 

AT last the impossible heroes of fiction are explained to 
us. They are such stuff as dreams are made of and 
their little life is rounded by a vision. Altogether the dis- 
closure is a rash one. No writer short of Dante can afford 
to tell his visions, if he has them, and he had to pass among 
mortals as "the man who had been through hell" in conse- 
quence. Generally speaking, it is much out of hades that 
the visions come, for, if we are to trust the authors, it is 
only when they have reached the last pitch of desperation 
and despair that the visions burst upon them. That is why 
the unregenerate "line-o'type" poets are trying to make it 
a matter of mince pie. That is why the craziest thing an 
author can do is to tell his troubles or escapes to a reporter. 
If angels or devils have come to his relief, let him lock the 
secret in his own breast and pretend at least that he has 
evolved the brilliant climax or troublesome solution from his 
inner consciousness. Only Prof. James and a few others 
know that it is the same thing, and until they have taught 
us something further about the "lifting of that threshold of 
consciousness," which lets in the vision, even they can not 
have much to say. 

The curious thing in the case, however, is that they are 
more tolerant than the general public to the imperfect vision 
and will go about patiently investigating visions and revela- 
tions of uneducated Websters, and travesties of life and 
art, which that same public rejects with a sneer and a jest. 
The underlying demand of the public is that anything which 

150 



Dreams and Visions 151 

partakes of the supersensuous or unknown shall have some- 
thing superior to the known to give it character. And 
though that may be wholly unscientific to the investigator 
it touches a fundamental faith of humanity which is after all 
more value to the race than aught that science has yet un- 
folded, and that is a belief in the ideal beaut}'^, truth and 
perfection which sleep in the unseen and which any true 
vision of it must reveal to man. It is this that has made the 
jealous exactions upon art in all directions. Standing as a 
seer upon the mountain tops of vision, the artist is expected 
to disclose to man something beyond the dull level of his 
common life, and if he can not do it his vision is discredited. 

Says life to art, I love thee best, 
Not when I find in thee 
My very face and form expressed 
In dull fidelity. 

But when in thee my yearning eyes 
Behold continually 
The mystery of my memories 
And all I long to be. 

That is the true demand upon art everywhere, and all 
the waves of realism that have been brought to bear upon it 
can not obscure it. Indeed, it is the eternal protest of the 
soul that the ideal is the real. It is also the admission of 
the soul that it is walking now in rather a vain show, con- 
sidering that so little of the ideal is disclosed about it. 
Neither is it any use to look for the ideal along tlie ordinary 
lines of man's investigation. With all respect to the gifted 
writer who found the climax that satisfied her etched above 
the head of a Sunday speaker, the ideals of truth and beauty 
are not always found in halos about the head of pious 
preachers or even positivist philosophers, but come up oft- 



168 Dreams and Visions 

times c'K'urr.st from tlu- pit wlioro somr (iclirious INn', I)r 
Quincy or Villon fights buck tlir murky lohorts of the night 
and lets the startled daylight in. 

The main consolation in the case is the certainty that 
the gloiious ideal is always existent back of all phenomena, 
and waiting ever to break through the evil of the so-called 
actnal, nuich as Carlyle expresses it when he exclaims, "Oh, 
thou who pinest in the imprisoinnent of the actual and criest 
to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know 
this of a truth: the thing (the ideal) thou scekest is already 
Avith thee, covdd'st thou only soe." The prayer of Ajax 
for the light is, therefore, the main one that the wrestler with 
either life or art has need of, and back of that the death- 
less faith to believe that the children of the light are there, 
though his vision or his craft should never reach them. 
This is, of course, the life principle of all achievements, of 
all endeavor, and it is not strange that in the pursuit of it 
the feverish artist should hearken at every door of the oc- 
cult, the mystic, to see if some chink through the darkness 
will not let in the sound or glimpse of the eternal. It is 
only when he ceases to hearken or cries back to the waiting 
multitudes that the ideal is a dream that his work is dead — 
nay, more, that he is dead also. For it is nuich with life as 
the poet writes of friendship: 

I am not shocked by failings in my friend. 
For human life's a zigzag to the end ; 
But when he to a lower plane descends 
Contented there, alas, my former friend! 

Contentment on the lower plane, acceptance of the im- 
perfect shadow for tiie perfect reality, is the one sin for 
which the spirits of light and progress know no redemption. 
Fortunately, it is not a connnon one to restless humanity. 



Dreaina and Visions 153 

'J'li«Mi;^li coiintlc.'ss charriiers on every liaiui offer it the shadow 
for the substance, and all tlie pleasures of the phantom 
show, the hunger "pain of finite hearts that yearn" for the 
infinite real is preferred before them. Art, romance, the 
poet's dream and the prophet's vision, all, all are tried and 
tested by this inner longing, and if they fall short of the 
demands, the scoffs and jests of disappointed spirits ring 
round them and the dusts of time receive them. Bad dreams 
may indeed bring bloody hands and daggers for the artists' 
use, but after all he who sees to the end of dreams alone can 
fit them to the eternal issues and leave the moral order of 
the universe uncaricatured by them. 

It is dangerous for an author to put much trust in a 
vision till he has tried the vision to see if it be of tlie gods. 
I'hat these gods are in better business than untangling the 
knots of sensational novels is the thing commonly predicted 
of them. But, after all, that may be only another of the 
pious frauds perpetrated upon us by those who claim a closer 
acquaintance with them than the exhibition of it warrants. 
That no one can quite declare where, in all the seething 
mass of mind or intellect their swift lightning may strike, 
is the first lesson of capricious genius and mental power. 
With such great moral teachers as Hugo, Hawthorne, Dick- 
ens, before our eyes no one can well deny it to the novelist. 
All that we can fairly ask of them in dealing with the high- 
er powers and visions is that they shall observe something 
of the harmonies of the old Greek dramatists who made it a 
rule never to let a god appear urdess for actions worthy 
of a god. 



LAWS AND LAWMAKERS 

ArUOMINKN'r club woman of Chicago once found 
herself in an enibarrnssing- situation. With a view to 
reforming' things in the educational aft'airs of the city she 
called upon the president of the board of education to say 
that her club demanded the enactment of a particular rule. 
Being induced to put that rule in writing she was shown 
bv the papers of the board that the identical regulation 
required had not only been in existence, but in actual opera- 
tion, for some twelve or fourteen years. This was trying, 
of course, to an "estimable and intelligent" leader of clubs 
and reforms and it is to be feared that the amused president 
rather pressed his advantage when he requested her to give 
the matter away more eit'ectually by circulating copies of 
the embarrassing rule among the members of her club. Yet 
this she might have accomplished \vith a laugh, although 
it is said she declined the opportunity of turning the neat 
joke into club sport and left the triumphant president to 
serve it up for his own purposes in an Eastern paper. How- 
ever, a boai'd of education president ought not to be too 
sarcastic over it, for it is not a dull woman that could draw 
up on a u\omeut's notice a fundamental rule for the right 
management of schools, and that she was disturbing the air 
with demands for a law that already existed is no more than 
all teachers, pi-eachers, agitators, reformers and lawmakers 
the world over are more or less engaged in. 

There is not a legislator who ever formulated a law worth 
considering tliat he was not simply repeating a rule of life 

Ifvl 



Lawn a/iid LawmalcerH 1 55 

already in existence. Indeed, the beauty of life i.s that 
there is a definite rule or law for securing to us every joy 
or good our souls can pine for, and the only concern we 
have in tlie nnatter is not to cross those laws. Yet consider 
the army of enterprising Solons, who go about laying down 
rules for everything and laws to regulate the universe, while 
only now and then some honest Philistine will tell us frankly 
that we need none of them, and that "the ideal of life is only 
man's normal life.'*^ It is a law of being that we should be 
j;erfect, that we should be fair, that we should be happy, 
that tlie things we want should come to us, the friends we 
seek seek us, and the love we need need us. Yet from all 
time people quite outside the secrets of our individual lives 
and needs have been industriously telling us "how to be 
happy," "liow to be good," "how to be beautiful," "how to 
be beloved." In fact, the inmost sanctities of our souls have 
been resolved into codes and treaties till half the sweetness 
and the flavor have been taken out of them. What finer, sub- 
tler thing exists in life tlian a perfect human friendship.'' 
Yet consider the cold-blooded analysis and rule-making to 
which it has been subjected by different writers from Plato 
down, till it has actually come to pass that we read and 
find approved such counsel as this: "Friendship is to be 
valued for what there is in it, and not for what can be gotten 
out of it. When two peo[)le appreciate each other because 
eaclj has found the other convenient to have around, they 
are not friends." 

What is a woman's naive tampering with an existent 
school law by the side of that? And love! that more than 
earthly mystery and miracle of all being! What has been 
done by the lawmakers with its "free primeval spirit of holi- 
ness and light." To such tape measure rules of life and 
liberty, such desecrating ideas of right and wrong, has it 



156 Laws and Lawmakers 

been subjected that it has actually become necessary for its 
best friends to put forth "credos" to declare that in all its 
manifestations and promptings it is an "emanation of the 
divine." Goodness itself has been made such an outer shell 
of creeds and systems that many an energetic soul has a mad 
desire to steep itself in wickedness if only to get at the kernel 
of life in some way. "There are many vices which do not 
deprive us of our friends ; there are many virtues which pre- 
vent our having any," said the great Talleyrand, and no 
man knew better than he the mistaking codes of life that 
made it so. Nevertheless, those codes were all aiming at 
the same thing — to hit upon the right law in the case, though 
to do that was but to repeat the club woman's exploit of 
clamoring for a law that already existed. 

In its last analysis, therefore, the whole thing resolves 
itself to about the position which John Jay Chapman adopts 
when he advises rulemakers and reformers that "idealism is 
the shortest road to their goal." It is in treating man as a 
selfish animal when he is normally unselfish that the mistakes 
in government and philanthropy or reform have been made, 
he tells us, and in this light it is difficult to see just where 
the whole cumbersome machinery of law and government 
comes in any way. For, if to legislate for man as a sinner 
is a mistake, and to legislate for him as a saint is unneces- 
sary, the only legitimate end of human institutions would 
seem to be to enlighten and not govern, to lift up and not 
bind down — in short, to show man who and what he is and 
what are his true relations to those eternal laws of life which 
are written in the very nature of things, and let him control 
and reform himself. 

"In his will is our peace," was the one note of law the great 
lifeseer, Dante, bore to the very souls in hell, and out of 
that fundamental truth in the moral order of the universe 



Laws and Lawmakers 157 

he left them to climb to paradise. It is to know heaven's 
law, not multiply earths' laws, that humanity most needs, 
and one of the greatest strides that the race ever made was 
in recognizing that that law was everywhere, in the natural 
and the spiritual world, and everywhere for joy, and beauty, 
and good. When it came to pass that man could truly say 
with the poet, "I spoke as I saw, I report as a man may of 
God's work, yet all's law, all's love," his redemption drew 
nigh. Simply to put himself in the path of it was all re- 
quired of him. "It is just a matter of mental attitude," 
sav the wise psychologists, and whether Christian faith or 
psychic science help you to the right attitude, the blind laws 
of men become ofttimes worse than superfluous in the light 
of it. It was Solon himself who said that they were like 
cobwebs where tlie weak or trifling were caught, but the great 
broke through and were off. Yet more and more as the 
great break through the flimsy nets of man's laws, they 
shoAv us the shining bars of the eternal laws of life and love 
holding, guiding, protecting us in every path of beauty and 
holiness, until, as the gentle Whittier puts it, "All things 
sweet and good seem our natural habitude." 



THE BOY AND THE MAN 

IN all the anomalies of nature there is little more astonish- 
ing than the contrast between the boy and the man. Any 
one who can may believe that the child is father to the man, 
but until life shows a few more cherubic pilgrims along her 
grown-up highways, it is a proposition that child lovers 
will question the world over. Something comes into the 
cold and calculating spirit of the man that you will search 
for in vain in any child that was ever born into the world. 
Something inheres in the glad and trusting spirit of the 
poorest child that is lost totally in the grown-up man. 
What becomes of it, poets and philosophers have tried to 
tell us at different times, and in different forms and fashions, 
but it all amounts to little more than this — that 

At length the man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day. 

To the nurse or mother, however, the transformation in 
the growing boy is far less gradual. Whether the cherubic 
age of his enchantment depends upon angels or petticoats, 
he commonly abandons it with the latter, and springs full- 
armed into that bumptious and destructive creature, known 
to past ages as the "enfant terrible" and to the present one 
as the heir presumptive to brilliant and unmeasured genius. 
Nevertheless, he gives no hint of machivelian deeps in his 
translucent nature and does all his deviltry so joyfully to 
be seen of men, that no one can connect the directly opposite 
type of grown-up scribe or pharisee with the small boy's 

158 



The Boy and the Man 159 

fathering. "Delight and liberty" are, indeed, his "simple 
creed" of life and conduct, and to keep them free from the 
blind interdicts of grown-ups, a mere question of logic or 
ingenuity. "Mamma said we must not pla}' in the park to- 
day," said nurse to 5-year-old Johnny, as he pulled her to- 
ward the gate where the crowds were gathering. "But 
mamma won't know it," said the young reasoner. "But 
what if she asks us if we went there when we go home?" in- 
quired the nurse. "Us'll say no," replied the innocent 
without a thought of harm. 

Sin as sin is totally unknown to the small boy, and now 
that psychology has found that all the mischief and diablerie 
he has been held accountable for is not inbred sin, but vital 
energy fermenting within him, it is a matter of no slight 
interest to know when and how he strikes that awful line 
which turns the good to evil and leaves him to "mix identi- 
ties" with the grown-up man and sinner. Out of such an in- 
nocent beginning to come to such a sad and sullied end is 
something that no theories or philosophies of the human 
soul have begun to account for or even recognize at its full 
meaning. The best man that ever lived stands confounded 
before one glimpse of his innocent boyhood and finds it hard 
to identify himself with the radiant youth, who touched 
hands with all good angels and genii, and saw heaven break- 
ing through earth in every rose of morning. Could any 
good creator have designed this thing, or gentle mother na- 
ture have put up such a retrogressive horror upon her chil- 
dren.'' It is impossible to believe it. 

Who told you that j^ou were naked.'' That is the ques- 
tion that rings down the ages at the gates of a lost Eden, 
and as each child in his development repeats the story of the 
race it is no doubt when some serpent of darkness blights 
the blue sky of babyhood with some knowledge of evil that 



160 The Boy and the Man 

his fall begins. Not until the human intellect has reached 
a point where it can know good and evil along the eternal 
line of cause and eifect, act and sequence, can conviction of 
sin be made a means of grace to it. Before that it would 
be the first impulse of the startled creature to run away 
and hide himself from an}' God who seemed responsible for 
such deadly issues. The wisest little Eve who ever grap- 
pled with the dark question was that niece of Phillips Brooks, 
who, when told that she had been naughty and must ask God 
to forgive her, replied clieerily, "Oh, I told him all about it 
and he just said, 'Don't mention it, Miss Brooks.' " The 
lilliputian Adam, however, takes it more heavily, and that, 
perhaps, as much as the different conditions of his life, is 
the reason why he is caught more deeply in the toils and 
falls away more swiftly and perceptibly than the girl child 
from the divine innocence of his first years. In any case the 
change is woeful, and the indications are that the man him- 
self goes mourning it to the end of his days. "Would I were 
a boy again" is the cry of his heart at every burst of spring 
or flurry of first snoAv in the December heavens. The charm 
of half his Avooing is in the visions of the boy heaven, with 
all its angels that it calls up, and if he does not build the 
domestic fireside mainly to find a corner where he can play 
the boy again, he tries the ticklish game about it often 
enough. The scenes of his boyhood are ever the ones near- 
est his heart, and the close of life finds him babbling of the 
green fields of childhood or murmuring, A\-ith the dying 
schoolmaster, "It is growing dark, boys ; we must go home." 
Hood sings 

I remember, I remember 
The fir trees dark and high. 
I used to think their slender tops 
Were close against the sky. 



The Boy and the Man 161 

It was a childish ignorance, 

But now 'tis httle joy 

To know I'm farther ofF from heaven 

Than when I was a boy. 

All literature and life throb with the pathos of this cry, 
yet few pause to question why it should be so, or what it 
would mean if man's consciousness of heaven and nearness to 
it grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength, 
instead of falling away into the "obstinate questioning" 
and "blank misgivings" of the world-worn creature who 
trembles, as the poet tells us, before the high instincts of 
his childhood "like a guilty thing surprised." Somehow to 
reverse his steps and become again as a little child was the 
only redemption which the Lord himself discerned for the 
wretched wanderers who had strayed so far away from those 
glad groves of childhood whose palm tree tops "were close 
against the sky." Yet how shall a man be born again when 
he is old was the legitimate question that waited upon it, 
and not all the subtlest logic of the Christian faith and mys- 
teries could answer it in a manner exactly creditable to the 
crooked wanderer. To worry "through the toil and moil of 
many years" just for the brilliant "chance of getting back 
to where and what he was" is not all that was to be expected 
of a progressive being, or a progressive order of being, and 
this squeezing of a frightened penitent into heaven at the 
last gasp, when all his life has been a chase in the other di- 
rection, is not a thing to do humanity proud, any way you 
look at it. 

That the end of man's mortal life should be fairer, purer, 
diviner than any dream of its beginning is what the law of 
life demands, and what the Giver of Life must have intended 
when he made man. What thwarted the plan or stepped in 
at the quickening point of a soul to turn the evolutionary 



162 The Boy and the Man 

course of being into confusion is, of course, the question that 
has torn philosophers and theologians since time began. 
But that such earth blight need not be, one little babe of 
Bethlehem, wearing human flesh and walking in growing 
grace and beauty, all human ways, has testified to all time. 
And the sweetest thing at the heart of all that testimony 
was the ceaseless insistence that he came from the Father 
and knew all men as his brethren. Convince man of his 
heredity from God, or, as the old Brahmin has it, "tell him 
who and what he is," and heaven will lie about him in age 
as in infancy, nor can all "the years that bring the inev- 
itable yoke make him 

Forget the glories he hath known 

And that imperial palace whence he came. 



CONCERNING FOOLS 

THE dangers of a little knowledge are beginning to en- 
gage the attention of writers and educators the world 
over. After a long swing of the pendulum in the direction 
of cramming, pruning, pounding into pedagogic holes and 
casts, the reaction has begun, and we are told that we are 
all "boors of culture," victims of mob violence in educa- 
tion, rows of misfits in the garments of knowledge, and, in 
short, as the oldest authority on the subject has it, "in 
professing ourselves to be wise we have become fools." Any, 
one might have seen that it would end in this when, indeed, 
nature made us fools in the beginning, and science has been 
systematically protesting to us that in all that is worth 
knowing we must remain fools to the end. To set up, there- 
fore, that we know anything, is to fly in the face of all the 
brilliant mystery and tangle of things to which we have been 
born. The only thing that we can legitimately claim of 
life or society is the right to be fools after our own hearts. 

It is mainly a question of choice in the kingdom of fools, 
and it is not clear why one fool has not about as good a right, 
to protection as another. According to all teachers, 
preachers, schools or sects, the people on the other side are 
always a set of fools or scoundrels, and every man who has 
a difference with another man sets him down as a hope- 
less idiot if he can not bring him over to his own view. 

It is impossible to determine how many "kinds of an 
ignoramus" the human being everywhere becomes when any 
question of the other sex is uppermost. From the begin- 

163 



IG-i Concerniny FooLs 

ning men and woincn have boon Inrgoly fools and enigmas to 
each other, and the safest thing that either of them can 
ask under the circumstances is the right to remain so. There 
is no possible indication that the modern effort to tear 
away the veil and find something more comprehensible and 
Avell ordered behind it is of any advantage to eitlier party. 
"A fool there was, and he made his prayer,'' is rather the 
keynote to the situation still, especially where any tender 
romance is considered among creatures who really prefer 
to believe each other everything under the shining heavens 
but just what they are. That Charlotte, "like a well-con- 
ducted person, goes on spreading bread and butter," is the 
last thine that her lover wants to hear about her when he 
is borne worsted past her on a shutter. That she should 
go into hysterics like any common little idiot Avould please 
him bettor. And Charlotte — does she want to know that 
her lover is putting heart, breath, brain and every fiber of 
his being into a man's chase for place or power, instead of 
being ready to sacrifice all creation for one smile from her, 
as he has idiotically sworn that he could.'' "Thou little 
thinkest hoAv a little foolery governs the world.'' said one of 
the old philosophers, and what would become of love's world 
without it not the bravest of the world's philosophers has 
undertaken to set forth. 

If half we tell the girls were true, 

If half we swear to be or do, 

Were aught but lying's bright illusion. 

This world Avould bo in strange confusion, 

sang the honest Byron, and yet to-day eA'ery creature in 
love believes things that would turn the very stars out of 
their courses if they were true. And who would undertake 
to end it.' It would be the verv madness the Bible itself 



Concerning Fools 165 

warns us against when it declares that "he that increaseth 
knowledge increaseth sorrow." Yet here are our new guides 
telling us to prove all things, and stand foi- nothing that is 
not based on facts ground out of our own experience. 

Hut, of course, this is because they have caught the mani- 
acs to the idea of "being well informed" trying, like the 
.Vew York belle of Boyesen's acquaintance, to get the gist 
of Spinoza's philosophy out of her learned partner as she 
swung round the ballroom floor with him, or the club woman 
"doing" the "Women of the Renaissance" for a next fort- 
night's paper, or that "half educated woman" of Prof. 
Munsterberg's dinner acquaintance, settling problems of life, 
death and the soul's essence "between two spoonfuls of ice 
cream." And they don't like it. They call them all fools 
for their pains, and no doubt they are; but, after all, what 
more of certified knowledge have their wise critics achieved 
by longer poring into the heart of things.'' And why is the 
connection of wars and fashion plates, doorknobs and crops 
in Europe, learned in Herbert Spencer and frivolous in the 
society girl.'' If the grade scholar opines that two and 
two may make five he is put on the dunce block. When Ibsen 
asks, "Who will guarantee me that on Jupiter two and two 
do not make five?" the world cries "Hear! hear!" The wise 
man knows that he is a fool, says Shakespeare, but does he 
when he flounts all other fools for being fools after their 
own kind, and is he really ready to respect a farmer who 
does not know "a Hobbema from a garden tool," because he 
does know a wheatfield from early rye, or to trust a physi- 
cian who asks him "if Ambroise Pare was the Ambroise that 
loved Heloise so deeply," because he has mastered the in- 
tricacies of appendicitis.'' 

Not until the scholars themselves are ready to admit that 
life is too short and beclouded to make it other than a choice 



166 Concerning Fools 

of ignorance more than knowledge will this grasping after 
surface culture to hide the defects of all ignorance be done 
away with. And, meantime, why not be happy in our ig- 
norance and choose the line of ignorance that means most 
bliss? "Let's be frivolous and gay and superficial," says 
the heroine of a modern novel, and no doubt she, or her 
creator, had learned the folly of trying to get Spinoza's 
philosophy in a nutshell. If Michael O'Hennesy, sitting in 
his brougham, is a genuinely happy object, as Mr. Lee ad- 
mits, why should he become wretched by trying to run an 
automobile into the heart of science, civilization and all dark 
mysteries. "All I ask of you," said a society girl to a gay 
Lothario she was about to marry, "is that if you do any 
fool things after the wedding curtain drops you will keep 
them to yourself." And village story saith they lived like 
turtledoves ever after. It is the eternal prying into knowl- 
edge inconvenient to us that makes havoc of homes and all 
human institutions everywhere. "The unknown God, him 
declare I unto you," said the wisest of the apostles, and to 
see eye to eye, and know as we are known, is a consumma- 
tion wisely reserved for a better world than this. Where- 
fore the fool's prayer, as one of our own poets has written 
it, touches the core of all wisdom. "God be merciful to me, 
a fool," is no doubt the most fitting petition that our stam- 
mering tongues and groping minds can put up. But the 
pity of it is that no one short of a God has any ear for 
such a prayer. And that is largely what is the matter with 
our poor pretentious and pedantic little earth. 



TANGLES OF LIFE 

MORE and more life in the hands of our teachers is 
becoming like the picture puzzles. "The Arab is look- 
ing for his camel; where is it?" Scrawling lines and barren 
plain, and never a gleam of anything that looks more like 
a camel than a sage bush; yet all the brilliant ones take 
much delight in drawing the humpbacked creature out of 
his retirement and displaying to us his goodly proportions. 
The ambition of the scientific and unscientific alike seems 
to be to present life as a bewildering puzzle and yet show 
us how to draw the object of our desire out of it. Gra- 
ciously, too, when revealed, they show us that it was a part 
of the landscape, and expect us to admire the skill of the 
artist who put it there. Those who find it appear to. 
Those who miss it challenge the sense of the craftsman at 
once, and for any other purpose than hiding a camel or 
some other ungainly beast in a wilderness his effort is a poor 
one. That is why the whole game seems beneath the dignity 
of the Great Artist of the universe. 

Out of a little suburban window one of his spring pictures 
opens this moment to the view. A woodland park, carpeted 
in a soft, fresh velvet green that no loom of the Orient can 
match ; trees just showing a faint glimmer of coming leaf or 
bud against the airy tracing of thin, bare boughs ; a sky of 
ethereal blue melting in a kind of misty tenderness into the 
calm bosom of the great lake that sweeps on and on, in 
delicate waves of purple and azure, to the far horizon. 
Where is the camel.'' What lumbering, slow-footed beast of 

167 



168 Ttiiiiylfs of Life 

\nn\ini\ dcsxvc has nuv oci'vilt m.'iuiat.' to projocl inti> tlmt 
scejio? Aiul (."an anv rational croaturo bolicvo that the di- 
vine artist meant tl\e lunng for whom he pjiinted it to do 
aught but sit down in rapt content ami ilrink it in to Ins 
soul's refreshing: 

Last night a round. yeUow moon hvmg K)w in tlie soft skv, 
and out of the brooiiing forest the erv of tl\e whip-poor-will 
rang full anil elear. What tortured shape of desire would 
vou paint there- Nothing short of two voung lovers newly 
wed would tit tho seeno, and no doubt it was maile for them 
aiul all other happv spirits who have no problems to innit 
in it. 

To projeet man's ilark and tangled in\ages of desire into 
the fair and open faee of nature and set him hunting for 
them there is to pervert the tinest ministry of creation to 
his soul's unrest. This searching for some hidden meaning 
everywhere, some pu./le in the picture, some shape that shall 
spring forth to satisfy the haunting demon of desire, is the 
thing that steals from us the very glory of the universe, 
aud the old Brahmins were no doubt right in teaching that 
only in the death of desire was the birth of any true life or 
fullness of beiiig possible to man. So long as he is search- 
ing for bis own little dromedary or caravan to wait upon 
him all the eternal forces of creation sweep round him in 
vain. 

Kven Sylvia's absence should not take the music out of 
the Nightingale. Yet it does, and that is one of the sorri- 
est features of the case, since from time innnemorial all na- 
ture and life have beiMi trying to teach man that she, too, 
could drop out of the landscape — nay, only by some raiv 
chance could be found in it. The most capricious wizard 
tliat ever tried to hide steetls in a wilderness is that little 
God of love. Yet all creation turns life into a picture puz- 



Tangles of Life 169 

zle to find thorn at his behest, and commonly resolves it to 
a desert, or som(.'thing worse in the operation: 

To be witli VV'illielm, that's my lieaven ; 
Without him — that's my hell. 

So runs th(; delirious lesson. And sliortly Willielm takes 
to the woods, or that mysterious realm of "You can never 
know why," and there you are in hell, just where you ought 
to be for trying to make heaven out of any creature but 
the highest. 

That is the secret of life's picture puzzle if you want to 
know it ; and of every leaf and flower and growing thing 
that freshens and blooms in the springtime and fades and 
blooms again, in life's eternal round. They all speak of a 
light that fails not, a love that knows no satiety; a being 
that floats high and higher toward that great white cen- 
ter of life, unhampered by the need of any Ariadne clews of 
philosopher or mystic to show it the way. That grand old 
Hebrew palmist knew it, when he said "The heaven declares 
the glory of the Lord and the firmament showeth his handi- 
work," and there is nothing obscure in that matchless pic- 
ture that he rolls out. That poet, "beautiful as an angel," 
knew it when he sent his skylark careening through the 
golden light, "like an unbodied joy whose race is just be- 
gun." 

There are no tears and puzzles in "the sweet face that na- 
ture wears," save as man, with his fears and groanings, and 
selfish individual desires and ambitions, puts them there, for 
himself, or his brother. And, oh ! the pity that some strong 
hand can not wipe them out and give us the rapture of the 
open picture before it is folded up like a scroll from our 
failing sight. Once to gaze upon it, without that haunting 
sense of some hidden want, some puzzling problem to 1k' 



170 Tangles of Life 

wrought out of it, might reveal to us the end of all wants 
in its harmonious whole. For Avhat we want of life may 
be, after all, of less moment than what it wants of us, and 
if we could fit into the picture perhaps the tangle of the 
whole business would be resolved for us. 

For many decades the very gentlest of the philosophers 
have been telling us that what God has made his creatures 
to need that he invariably provides. ''I do not believe that 
God ever made a want without providing for its supply," 
says one of the latest of them, and that seems the only true 
principle for any fair creator to go upon. Considering, 
then, tliat we spend the better part of our days chasing 
after wants that are never supplied, the natural conclusion 
is that we are on the track of wants not made by the Cre- 
ator. And this, indeed, it may be, that turns the fair face 
of things into mysteries and tangles, when the bounties of 
heaven are ever open as the day and common to every crea- 
ture that breathes. To draw the object of his own desire 
out of the human canvas there is no limit to the liberty 
which man will take with the picture, and in the main all the 
psychic teachers of the day are abetting him in it. Mean- 
time, life teaches him, as one great preacher has it, to 
"satisfy his wants by lopping off his desires," and not till 
he has mastered that lesson can he know, indeed, how glori- 
ous is the provision which the Creator offers for every want 
that he has made. 



THE VIRTUES OF THE RELATION OF BROTHER 
AND SISTER 

HOW to keep young is an endless theme for all writers. 
Volumes could be given to the guesses that have been 
made at it. Rules and recipes are a drug on the market. 
Yet one prime secret in the case has been wholly ignored. 
It is so simple, too, that children of one family ought to 
have guessed it long ago. Eschew marriage and cling to 
your brothers and sisters. That is all there is of it — un- 
less some troublesome reasoner should suggest that without 
marriage there'd be no brothers and sisters, and then it 
might be necessary to add, if tribulations must come, at 
least take a recess from them and hunt the playmates of 
youth, the ones who always stand as children with you in 
the records of time. Brothers are always young — sisters 
remain "Sis" to the end. "We children" turns the scale 
backward whenever the family relation comes uppermost. 
The philosophy of it lies partly in the fact that no more 
than the leopard can change its spots can the kinks and char- 
acteristics of the child that made sport for the teasing 
brother or the mischievous sister fail to declare themselves 
when the old touch calls the hidden springs of being into 
play. Three children of one house — Emily, Sarah and Tom 
— recently met almost by chance at one of life's way sta- 
tions, when the spring began to stir spring in the blood for 
all earth's children. The family trio by count of years stood 
anywhere between 50 and 60, with Tom at the head of the 
record. But, what with rollicking and reminiscencing, the 

171 



172 Thf yirtucs of tlu: Udaiion of Brother and Sister 

dig'Tutv of years sut v^o lii;hllv upon their shoulders that tlic 
very third day found Tom slipping- a pollyNVOg into Sarah's 
plump hand just to hear her scream and blowing up frogs 
through hollow straws stuck in their throats to make Emily 
laugh as she "used to" at their fuuiiy attempts to dive in- 
stead of float when he flung them back into the water. 

Tom and ^Maggie Tulliver, in the sweetest and truest life 
story George Kliot ever wrote, tells the truth of a relation 
that is the purest and most enduring of all earthly ties, 
and the one above any other that ''always finds us young 
and always keeps us so.'' Long before George Eliot's day, 
too, the masters of literature gave their sublimest efforts to 
glorifying a brother and a sister's love. Sophocles' master- 
piece is given to this theme. In his immortal drama, An- 
tigone, a sister's love shines like a star above every love of 
earth. In Dickens' "Child's Dream of a Star" it is the 
whisper, "Has my brother come yet.-^'' that points his fin- 
est conception of the love that weathers time and awaits the 
soul in heaven. "We never love as the angels do till love's 
first passion dies," said an old English poet ; but a brother's 
love begins that way and knits itself to the love of the an- 
gels without the need of any fires of time to burn out its 
dross. Love as a "brief madness" is so much the story of 
a lover's love that human affection would show a strange 
face if the ties of blood were stricken out of it. 

"Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quan- 
tity of love, make up my sum," cries mooning Hamlet, when 
fair Ophelia had perished in the very atmosphere of his 
love. But it is the brother who feels the eternal bond when 
he whispers, "A ministering angel shall my sister be.'' That 
blood is thicker than water the writers tell us is not only one 
of the most familiar, but one of the very oldest proverbs in 



The Virtues of the Relation of Brother and Sister 173 

existence, and the sympathy in years as well as relation- 
ship makes the tie of blood peculiarly strong in brothers and 
sisters. Divine as the love may be between parents and 
children, the inequality of age and relationship hurts that 
perfect sympathy and freedom which makes love and inter- 
course complete. Stevenson gives the case correctly, when 
he says, that, to make intercourse perfect there must be 
moral equality between the parties and to make love com- 
plete a mutual understanding which is love's very essence. 
"But the parent," he writes, "begins with an imperfect no- 
tion of the child's character, formed in early years, or dur- 
ing the equinoctial gales of youth ; to this he adheres, noting 
only the facts which suit with his preconceptions ; and hence 
between parent and child, intercourse is apt to degenerate 
into a verbal fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become 
ingrained." 

While love continues to fly out of the window when bank 
failures come in at the door, a brother who is born for ad- 
versity can discount the lover or titled lord any day. It 
is a significant fact that the only friend the Scripture rec- 
ognizes as one that sticketh closer than a brother is the 
Divine friend whose love outvied all men's. Of all the re- 
lations known to man, the one he chose to bring him closest 
to human need was that of an elder brother. If marriage 
ever does become what it ought to be on this troubled earth, 
it will be considerable of the elder brother and kin sister 
that will enter into it. It appears that even those fine 
creatures, the Maeterlinck's, had much trouble in adjust- 
ing the relationship until something like a natural harmony 
was established between them. Mme. Maeterlinck admits 
that many a jar marked their first days of matrimony. The 
artist temperament in both struck high, but dissimilar vibra- 



174 The Virtues of the Relation of Brother and Sister 

tions in each, and, until many breathing exercises (perhaps 
not all laid down by science) had achieved "perfect polariza- 
tion of the nerves," much trouble ensued. 

It may be for some adversities of this nature that the 
brother is born, and at any rate the woman who has learned 
to keep her vibration in perfect harmony with the brother 
will understand far better than the brotherless one how to 
polarize her nerves in her husband's case. It may be that 
men have lost more than they know in rejecting so scorn- 
fully and hotly their undecided sweetheart's proposals to 
love them as brothers. A faithful test of this nature might 
save half the incompatibilities of temper and temperament 
that keep the divorce courts busy. The club women who 
have recently made the surprising discovery that the ideal 
husband and wife should be "spiritual comrades, mental com- 
panions, physical mates," should go farther and advise us 
how to make sure of that nice adjustment without some bet- 
ter acquaintance than the ordinary lines of courtship allow. 
If it took the Maeterlincks so many moons to understand 
and harmonize the "two rates of vibrations," how are ordi- 
nary pairs to accomplish it in time to save them from the 
final "jars" that land them in the divorce courts? Steven- 
son's suggestion that if they can remain together long 
enough without coming to fisticuffs they will find "some pos- 
sible ground of compromise," seems to be the romantic one 
accepted in most cases. 

It is with this state of things in his mind that the author 
reproaches the presumptuous husband for risking a wife's 
happiness where he would never think of risking a sister's. 
"If she were only your sister," he writes, "how doubtfully 
would you entrust her future to a man no better than your- 
self." This touches upon a point in love which in itself 
favors brother love above all others. It may not be known 
to all brothers or approved of all men, but it is deepest in> 



The Virtues of the Relation of Brother and Sister 175 

the heart and dreams of every woman. It supposes a love 
that would keep Princess Ida on her throne, Diana in her 
free and hallowed woods, and abate not an iota of its 
strength and intensity. "I am more obliged to women for 
this ideal of the divine huntress," Stevenson admits, "than 
for any other," and, until marriage becomes the high and 
holy thing it should be, it is an ideal to be cherished every- 
where, and naturally one that must appeal to brothers who 
so "doubtfully" commit their sister playmates to men as 
they know them to be. 

For though there are men, not a few, of feelings as fine 
and sensitive as any woman's, they are not alive to the na- 
ture of the sensitive chords in a woman's soul, and, perhaps, 
unless Marcel Prevost can succeed in fathoming the mys- 
tery of such souls, they never will be. He seems to lean to 
the Diana ideal of the clear-eyed and self-sustaining woman, 
and in his dream of making marriage a pure matter of rea- 
son, he may liberate love from some of its domestic diffi- 
culties, and leave more "slim and lovely maidens to run the 
woods to the note of Diana's horn" and try a world where 
all the men are brothers, and "all the brothers valiant." 
The interesting and edifying discussion which this latest of 
the immortals has stirred up in literary and club circles as 
to whether love will ever go out of fashion, seems to ignore 
the possibility that it can live without marriage. Yet that 
very high priestess at the altar of love, Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning, declared in her immortal sonnets: 

If you can not love as the angels do, 

With the breadth of heaven between you two. 

It is not love. 

"A virtue for heroes," she declared love to be, and, con- 
sidering the heroic demands some marriages make upon it, 
the terms are well chosen. "How easy it would be for a man 



176 The Virtues of the Relation of Brother and Sister 

to remain in love with his wife if he had only married some 
one else," is one of the clever comments of a clever journal, 
which verily does throw a "side light" on the situation. Save 
with the brother and sister who grow into a sweet fellow- 
ship from childhood, the strain of living eternally under one 
roof through all the moods and commonplaces of domestic 
existence, is almost more than human nature can be found 
to stand for in effecting any happy relation between man 
and woman. Even the good bishops of England begin to 
tell us that "Every husband and wife would be better if they 
had a fortnight's holiday away from each other every year." 
And this, of course, is but a confirmation of the saying of 
the older teachers that "the secret of two people living hap- 
pily together lies in their not living too much together." 

Of course, it is in the very nature of the love that per- 
chance brings them together that the mischief lies. For the 
philosopher is right who says that, "like other violent ex- 
citements, love throws up not only what is best, but what is 
worst and smallest in men's character." "Some," he says, 
"are moody, jealous and exacting when they are in love, 
who are honest, downright good-hearted fellows enough in 
the everyday affairs and humors of the world." This ver- 
ily does explain, on truly psychological grounds, where 
everything in these days is required to rest, why a brother 
may be more desirable than a husband for the bright "hu- 
mors" and enjoyment of life. It would certainly explain 
why many a wife, who has grown weary of struggling with 
the jealousies, moods and exactions of the husband who, 
perhaps in his own way does truly love her, might feel like 
crying with the little child in its loneliness and grief: 

Oh, call my brother back to me, 
I cannot play alone. 



The Virtues of the Relation of Brother and Sister 177 

It is verily, too, when "the summer comes with flower and 
bee" that tlie cry grows strongest, and the^^ are happy, in- 
deed, whether men or women, who can answer to the child- 
hood's call and gather as a company of brothers and sis- 
ters about some sunny playground of youth. 



THE ETHICS AND MORALS OF THE LAUGHING 

HABIT 

WHAT rational creature should be content to laugh 
without understanding the science of laughter? 
And when he does understand it, why should he laugh at 
all? From Aristotle to Bergson in his essay on the comic, 
the analytical work of the scientists and philosophers is to 
reduce laughter to little more than Byron's bitter scorn of 
it, and life together, when he said: "And if I laugh at any 
mortal thing, 'tis that I may not weep." It is the defects, 
the awkwardness, the "rigidity" of body, mind and charac- 
ter of poor faulty humanity that science finds provokes 
laughter, and there is no very pious, just or kind note to be 
traced in the laughter which builds itself on such exhibi- 
tions. Incidentally it may act to correct them, but this is 
no thanks to the "laugher," for it is. through no conscious 
purpose that he falls into his corrective outburst, but by 
"some mechanism set up within him by nature that goes off 
on its own account." Thus, when he laughs vociferously 
at sight of some poor wretch slipping up on a banana peel, 
or chasing his hat down street in a windstorm, he is neither 
to blame for the heartless explosion, nor to be commended 
for the incentive to more prudence or elasticity in the hu- 
man subject, but simply to be taken as an exposition of that 
principle and machinery of laughter whereby nature pro- 
poses to keep her children from making themselves ridicu- 
lous in each other's eyes by losing that fawnlike grace and 
agility which should belong to them. 

178 V 



The Ethics and Morals of Laughing Habit 179 

This shows the deep insight of Watts when he put into 
his "Hymns and Spiritual Songs" the admonition, "Fly like 
a youthful hart or roe over the hills where spices grow," 
and perhaps suggests the reason why, when you take your 
lithe thoroughbred to a jaunt over the hills with you, you 
long for the free grace with which he leaps over rock and 
gully as a part of the redemption from the fall, or falls, 
which no Christian grace has yet furnished. There is no 
question that we are all poor sinners in our stumbling ways, 
but whether we can be laughed out of them is so doubtful 
a matter that to stake the whole ethical value of laughter 
upon that chance seems to give it less force in the moral 
field than it ought to have. The effort of the psychic cults 
to find the ethical value of laughter more directly in its re- 
lation to the man who laughs than any man who provokes 
the laugh, would promise better results no doubt if only the 
moving impulse to laughter could be somewhat redeemed 
from this scientific location of it in the foibles of our fellow- 
men. The inti'oaction of these two ethical principles, if 
they may be so called, of laughter, is curious enough and 
must be somewhat bewildering to students of the whole prob- 
lem. • For, while laughing at the awkward man may tend to 
cure him of his awkwardness, the wholesome effect of laugh- 
ter in the human being would be lost if the awkward man in 
all the phases of his rigidity and grotesqueness were effec- 
tually cured of his defects. That his failings have a definite 
ethical value in keeping the helpful note of laughter, if it is 
such, in the ranks of men is a legitimate conclusion from 
Prof. Bergson's claim that the comic does not exist outside 
the pale of the human and the "mechanical inelasticity" in 
the stumbling mortal is the only cause and occasion for 
laughter on earth. 

To be perfectly consistent, of course, Prof. Bergson does 



180 TJie Ethics and Morals of Laughing Habit 

not hold laughter up as one of the cardinal virtues. Rather, 
he gives it over to a decidedly low place in the scale of jus- 
tice, kindness, or really Christian behavior, and it is up to 
the laughing philosophers and cheering-up men to do what 
they can with what he has left of it. That they themselves 
have turned it to uses not altogether to be commended, is a 
point declaring itself somewhat too strongly in the life of 
to-day. "A generation of spurious laughers," one writer 
declares, as the result of the teacher's efforts to make the 
glad hand and smiling countenance the sign by which to con- 
quer in every field of life and activity. Laughter, as a 
business asset, the broad presidential smile, figure in Success 
magazines and records of political campaigns till nothing 
short of a "smile like the Mediterranean Sea" seems due to 
spread over the face of the whole nation if its welfare is to 
be assured. Meantime, however, a crop of cheerful hypo- 
crites lurking in the background, or dashing across the 
stage, engage the attention of a few discerning souls who 
threaten to go to the opposite extreme of declaring the death 
of laughter and the return of the serious countenance, the 
only chance for the regeneration of mankind. Thus is it 
that the pendulum swings back and forth in every line of 
human thought or endeavor, and whether we laugh or 
whether we cry we are sure to be wrong some way. It really 
seems as though Bernard Shaw must be right when he sub- 
mits that the unconscious self is the real and only power 
to be trusted and that our very breathing goes wrong the 
moment the conscious self meddles with it. When Rabelais 
declared that "to laugh is proper to the man" and did his 
brilliant best to encourage it he probably contributed as 
much to the best use and understanding of laughter as the 
case allows. 

Granted that man was made a laughing animal something 



The Ethics and Morals of Laughing Habit 181 

better than the defects of his kind ought to minister to the 
impulses within him. It is true that a close student of the 
case avers that while we smile at wit it is only a gross exhi- 
bition of the ridiculous that calls out laughter. Where- 
fore, if the author is right who claims that only man's fan- 
tastic tricks and blunders contain the elements of the ridicu- 
lous, why, then, there is nothing left for us but to laugh at 
wliat makes the angels weep in our fellowmen. Nor is there 
any escape from the proposition that mocking and unregen- 
erate man must cease his laughter before much headway 
can be made in the uplifting of the race. When one con- 
siders, however, what a dull world would be left to man if 
laughter should be wiped out of it, it is utterly impossible 
to give the matter over to scientific analysis and moral con- 
siderations. A something not dreamed of in their philoso- 
phy must reside in these subtle springs of laughter im- 
planted in human breasts. For one thing, despite all that 
may be said of their reformatory purposes in social life, it 
is doubtful if any true sociability could endure if society 
reformed its members to the extent of wiping laughter out 
of its ranks. There was deep sagacity in the great French- 
man's claim that he must attach himself to earth and its 
children by something sill}^, although chasing his hat, or re- 
peating Balzac's picture of a huge animal chasing its tail, 
may not have_been the figure that occurred to him. 

The significance of his position was admirably presented 
by a recent writer, who says : "Our souls rebel against be- 
ing kept ceaselessly at any pitch, no matter how clear and 
sonorous the tone may be. We may admire a friend's wit 
and intellectual power, we may lean upon his sympathy and 
sound judgment, yet it is his moment of giving way to un- 
considered mirth, his sudden drop to sheer nonsense, that 
endears him to us." And as against the claim of one writer, 



182 Tlie Ethics and Morals of Laughing Habit 

who says that "laughter is not an aid to progress," this 
friend of laughter declares that "a pretty atmosphere of 
fun creates a glamour where the best of us may bloom. In 
its mild warmth we grow and thrive, and, like the sparkle 
of tiny waves on a sunny day, it marks the steady prog- 
ress of the tide." It is true enough that much of the great 
and serious work of the world has been done by serious souls, 
though in their very seriousness they have perchance moved 
the "inextinguishable laughter of the gods." It is not every 
pious wrestler with his earth pilgrim's progress who real- 
izes with Bunyan that at the best many things "are of such 
a nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart 
doth ache." There is, in truth, a laughter at the heart of 
things terrestrial which seers, if not scientists, are fain to 
admit, and the most serious-minded actor is liable to be 
caught in the tide of it. 

The contretemps of life have no respect for piety or voca- 
tion, and the most solemn actor is often entangled in them 
somewhat as Mansfield was in the tragic scene of "A Pari- 
sian Romance," when, as "Baron Chevrial," he falls dead at 
supper while the music and the conversation were at their 
height. It was the business of the doctor in the play to rise 
upon the scene with the solemn call, "Stop the music; the 
baron is dead." But, in the perversity or mischief of things, 
it chanced that the music was jangling out of tune, and the 
doctor bewildered as to his part. Hence the audience was 
electrified, if not convulsed, by the sonorous call, "Stop the 
music ; it has killed the baron," and even the corpse was 
shadowed by an awful grin. The serio-comic, the melo- 
dramatic, is so liable to break out of the unforeseen and 
uncontrollable, that it seems impossible to believe that some 
spirit of mirth and mischief is not at the root of laughter 
in this whole terrestrial globe of ours. The immortal bard 



The Ethics and Morals of Laughing Habit 183 

was surely in the seci*et of laughter when he put a mis- 
chievous Puck in the field to effect those slips and accidents 
in human pathways which "make the whole quire hold their 
hips and laffe." The laughter of things as well as "the 
tears of things" figures too deeply in this planet of ours to 
be wholly ignored in life's riddle. Something more than the 
"rigidity" of man must take part in that unexpected blast 
which flings a signboard or a stray fruit rind in his path, 
to trip him up just when he is passing the window of the 
elegant Charlotte. It seems best typified by that fairy, 
Robin Goodfellow, of nature's domain, who, as the poet ex- 
plains, "leads us" and "makes us stray," 

And when we stick in mire and clay. 

Doth, with laughter (and to laughter) leave us. 

It may be that the angels in their proper heaven have 
no such tricks to entrap us for their own or our diversion. 
But something to take the place of merry laughter must 
enter into their shining sphere if the pleasure is to be com- 
plete, or the great poet and believer is right who tells us 
that "what we learn on earth we shall practice in heaven." 
A land of no laughter would certainly be a chill place to 
spirits tuned to laughter by all the brightest things of earth. 
It seems more natural to picture those heavenly courts ring- 
ing with the happy laughter of children who have found 
their Father's house. For, when all is said, the only laugh- 
ter worth considering is that which bubbles up from some 
spring of joy in the heart, and the gay and innocent laugh- 
ter of happy children is the sole embodiment of that. There 
is nothing sweeter in this old world of ours than the laugh- 
ter of children. It belongs to the heaven that lies about us 
in our infancy and might well belong to the heaven that may 
dawn upon us in our angel infancy. Save when perverted 



184 The Ethics and Morals of Laughing Habit 

by some adult influence, the laugh of the child has not one 
touch of that mocking or derisive character that science 
finds in the cachinnations of tlie man. The child laughs, 
and, perchance, claps his little hands in glee, for pure glad- 
ness, delight in his coveted toy, pleasure in his eager play 
or joy in the coming of some beloved idol or hero in the 
world of men. It is here in the child's world that the man 
of science must stud}'^ the problem of laughter in its true na- 
ture, and he can do no better than to follow the counsel of 
the poet who tells him: 

Go learn from a little child each day, 
Go catch the lilt of his laughter gay, 
And follow his dancing feet as they stray ; 
For he knows the road to Laughtertown, 
ye who have lost the way! 



THE CURRENT DEMAND FOR AN INSPIRED 
MILLIONAIRE 

AN inspired millionaire is one of the latest dreams of 
the writers. That brilliant optimist, Gerald Stanley 
Lee, is on the track of him. He "is the next best thing 
that is going to hajjpen to the world." He will not come 
in shoals, but as a solitary prodigy among big fishes, setting 
tlie unlieard-of example of not eating up tlie little ones. 
"One will be enough. He will make the rest unhappy. They 
will watch him really living and doing big interesting things 
with his money, and they will feel bored." He is due, we 
are told; overdue, we should say. That nothing but in- 
spiration can bring forth a millionaire with the modest tastes 
and conceptions of true living ascribed to him seems curi- 
ous, but perhaps the authors know. Can any good come 
out of Dives? "Can a vampire's body be white?" are prob- 
lems they have long been wrestling with, and if they have 
at last found out that it takes a Messiah to save the lost 
millionaire it is charity all around to make it known. 

Nothing short of genius, pure inspiration, on his own ac- 
count, ever taught a writer to bring dreams and not ser- 
mons to bear upon the milloinaire's case. That the poor ( ?) 
wretch had troubles of his own writers have discerned afore- 
time. "Alas, for Dives," says one, "whom every reformer 
wants to reform, wliom every socialist wants to strip, whom 
every demagogue wants to fatten on, and every promoter 
and philanthropist and college jn'esident and trustee of 
school, or hospital, or museum to 'interest.' Alas, for him. 

185 



186 The Current Demand for an Inspired Millionaire 

Every rascal tries to dip into him; good men warn him 
that he should relax his strings; bad men threaten to rip 
him up, and in the intervals between assaults his own con- 
science warns him that he has far more than his proper share 
of this world's goods." 

All this and more has been known of the plutocrat's woes, 
yet when the question comes, as with this writer, "What shall 
we say to him?" the wisest of his accusers gets no farther 
than the answer given here. "Let him try to be honest. 
That is all." "Let him dream dreams." "Let him become 
his own Messiah," is a whisper straight from the gods, 
dropped into Gerald Stanley Lee's ear. Not, truly, that the 
millionaire and his advisers have not had dreams before, 
dreams of empire and dreams of aggrandizement and even 
dreams of philanthropy and general culture. But this is 
different. Did any of our millionaires ever persuade men 
"to believe that being a rich man is one of the greatest 
and most honorable of all the professions, that a man can 
be rich and be a gentleman with his money down to the last 
dollar — that he can even be a great artist with it.?" 

That is what Lee's American millionaire is to do offhand, 
although but lately a fine French critic declared that con- 
summation in the art line a vain dream for a class who 
make art "a thing of trade, not to be produced, but to be 
imported at an exceedingly high price." Nevertheless when 
Messiah comes he will show us greater things than this, for 
he will show us how easy instead of how hard it is for a rich 
man to enter into the kingdom of heaven and pull all other 
rich men in with him. It will take a millionaire Messiah to 
do this. That is a guess that ought to have been made 
long ago. 

The poverty of the Buddhas, aye, the poverty of the 
Christ, appealed to the poor, provided for the poor, and 



The Current Demand for an Inspired Millionaire 187 

more or less excluded the rich, if not directly damning them. 
In the dreams of the disciples there lurked an idea, to be 
sure, that a second appearing of the Christ would be in 
great power and glory fitted to the demands of the proud- 
est of the millionaires, and perhaps some reflex of this is 
working in the subconscious mind of the present author. 
In any case a Messiah of boundless wealth is the only one 
to show man how to overcome temptations which poverty 
could not bring to any being, however ready to be "tempted 
in all points like as we are." Both the opportunities and 
temptations of wealth are shut off from the poor, and hence 
the very logic of life demands a Messiah who knows them 
to lead his own to victory and salvation. 

It is time, too, that the Machiavellian verdict that "vir- 
tue and riches seldom settle on one man," should be broken 
in upon, and the lofty speculations that the nonwealthy in- 
dulge in, as to the good they would do with riches if the gods 
had been wise enough to favor them, put to the test in the 
interests of mankind. It would certainly help to elucidate, 
if not justify, the ways of God to men, if this matter of 
putting the mightiest known agency for relieving the suf- 
ferings, and uplifting the souls of men which money repre- 
sents, into the hands of the least worthy could be changed 
or cleared up in some way. The poor have long enough 
had the gospel of endurance preached to them to very lit- 
tle betterment of their woes. If some one can stir up an 
inspired Messiah to call the rich to the rescue there may be 
hope of salvation along reasonable lines. 

The marvel and the mystery of the whole problem is that, 
with the power for such supreme joys and splendid deeds in 
their hands the millionaires fritter away their chances on 
such poor and petty objects and go down to dust and 
oblivion without one real pearl of life in their grasp. There 



188 The Current Demand for an Inspired Millionaire 

is no jo J known to men so great, and so pure, and so last- 
ing, as the joy of lifting up some other life from the dark- 
ness of want and deprivation, and slow death to the light 
and ecstasy of true life and opportunity under God's blue 
heavens and with the means to bring such blessedness to 
countless worthy lives what are the millionaires about 
that they so rarely improve their golden chance? The 
vision of "a great village smoking up to the sky blessing 
him," is one that more geniuses than Lee have held before 
the rich man's eyes. Goethe's master stroke was given to 
that same dream of the supreme moment of life and joy 
when the redeemed Faust looked upon the great village 
smoking up to the sky which he had lifted from pestilential 
bogs to health and beauty and the sweet peace of grassy 
lawns and sunlit parlors where, with no fear of a wolf at 
the door, a rescued peasantry could live and love as God 
meant his creatures should the wide world over. 

An inspired people, or even a half-awake people, could 
achieve the best results in this line, and so it is well that our 
author includes the inspired laborer in the millennium he 
hopes to bring about. If heaven would trust a few more 
of the common people with the means to live and achieve the 
world miglit even get along and swing starward without an}'^ 
inspired millionaire to help it. It is poverty that ruins the 
world, that curses mankind, that blights talent, dwarfs in- 
tellect and spreads crime and wretchedness everywhere. 
Wealth, fairly earned and distributed, would remedy the 
whole evil, and leave no work for the inspired millionaire to 
do. In fact, it would wipe out the millionaire, inspired or 
uninspired, and end all the misery that riches in the hands 
of a few have brought into the world. 

When Seneca wrote riches "the greatest source of human 
trouble," it was, as with every other philosopher of sucli 



The Current Demand for an Inspired MUUonaire 189 

faith, the abuse of riches that he had in mind whereby the 
many become minions or slaves of the few. Freedom, which 
is the true end of riches, can bring trouble to no man, nor 
will men ever become free for the better things of life till 
means sufficient to end the daily grind for its poorer neces- 
sities can be secured to all. Paul may plant and Apollos 
water, but no harvest of souls will ever be gathered in till 
people have a chance to pause in the struggle for bread to 
find out that they have souls. Sermons to half-starved men 
arc about the climax of idiocy. Feed my sheep was the be- 
ginning and end of all the master's teaching to the zealous 
disciple who sought to bring religion to bear upon the 
world. 

Poverty and crime, save by some special interposition of 
divine grace, are inseparable. "If I were starving I would 
steal," said a prominent minister of to-day. "Hadst thou 
been born and reared, surrounded and tempted like the 
criminal who excites thy indignation thou shouldst prob- 
ably not be better than he," says Bishop Spalding, and in 
the face of the recent disclosure of starving school children 
in New York how sternly sounds his statement. "They who 
starve the body can not nourish the mind, and if the heads 
of institutions of learning have not the means to supply 
copious, wholesome food, they should be made to withdraw 
from the business of education, but if, having the means, 
they seek to save money at the expense of health and life, 
they should be dealt with as criminals." 

Before Lee lands his inspired millionaire in the field, a 
goodly number of uninspired millionaires may have to be 
dealt with as criminals, if such work as the schools and courts 
have been lately disclosing goes on. The dream of men and 
lawyers who "will not sell their souls to make grand larceny 
possible" may have to achieve realization first. It is along 



190 Thr Currt'nt Dfnuvuf for an Inspired MUUonaire 

this line tluit tho njition\s progress is most confidently pre- 
dicted b}'^ some. Before the Circuit Court of Appeals took 
up the case we were assured that a fine of $'29,000,000, im- 
posed by a Federal Court upon a "wicked millionaire," 
meant salvation and inspiration for a whole nation. Now 
we seem to be rather thrown back upon the mercy of the 
individual Croesus again, and unless writers can inspire him 
to good behavior, or colleges confer honor as well as degrees 
upon him, there is no more hope than before. 

The demand for a jNIessiah is the true herald of his ap- 
pi*oach, and people as well as gods must take a hand in cre- 
ating the atmosphere of truth and genius that fosters 
"world singers" and ''Messiahs,"' to build up a world. It 
is easy to see that special powers and graces must attend 
the millionaire who is to "forge out the great faiths" that 
will lead his people to pious and unselfish world-ends and 
achievements. There have been millionaires — quite a few 
— "as good as anybody," but they have not redeemed their 
class. A special baptism from the heavenly powers, such 
as "great artists" know, may naturally be called for by any 
curious creed, however, which supposes that the majority 
of men are not to be ti'usted with wealth. Just the reverse 
of it is what ought to be the case, and what ought to be will 
be before the world drama is closed. Even a moderate de- 
gree of wealth puts a mail in position to do noble service 
both for himself and his fellow-men, and to suppose that 
human beings are made of such poor stuif as to go on pi'o- 
testing and abusing this grand chance forever, is to suppose 
heaven ]\as made a race of beings fit only for the death and 
damnation to which zealous Calvinists consigned them. 
There is certainly a strange misapprehension with the best 
of writers on this point. 

The maxims are endless which make wealth and prosper- 



The Current Demand for an Inspired Millionaire 191 

ity the most dangerous bequests to man. And yet the most 
that can be claimed is that tliey bring out what is in man, 
and offer tlie good as well as bad a cliance to declare itself. 
It is not true, either, as even the genial Stevenson says, that 
"it is as difficult to be generous on .$80,000 a year as on 
.$1000 a year." The man who can barely make both ends 
meet in the struggle for daily life has no resource but to 
smother every generous impulse within him. Tlie fact is, 
that it is impossible to say what a man's true character, 
taste or ability may be, until a fair measure of wealth has 
given him freedom and opportunity for self-expression. Let 
such opportunity become general, and it might turn out, 
as Fenelon long since told us, that "we are all inspired, but 
our mode of life stifles it." 



THE MODERN DEMAND FOR THE VIRTUE OF 
CHEERFULNESS 

WHERE is the Milton who would venture to put forth 
an ode to melancholy in these days? An ode to 
mirth is the demand of the hour. "Sadness as inseparably 
connected with the sublime" is a poetic principle that no 
new Foe is born to proclaim. The sweetness of music that 
the minor key closes floats faint and far beneath the jubi- 
lante which the clamorous world now demands of its sing- 
ers. What this may have to do with that loss of all great 
harpers, which the higher critics lament, the poets must 
consider for themselves. But in the humbler ranks of life 
and talent there seem to be losses entailed by the festive 
demands to which the jovial masters of the feast are not 
wholly alive. It is something kin in rather reversed fash- 
ion to the situation of the old-time reveler at the prohibi- 
tion banquet of to-daj^ as his toast gives it: 

Here's to a temperance supper, 

With water in glasses tall. 
And coffee and tea to end with — 

And me not there at all. 

The glad song and the glad countenance and even the 
glad hand still leave so much of the real absent that the es- 
tablishment of man's truest relations and friendships upon 
the basis of them somehow misses fulfillment. They lack 
something of that touch of nature which belongs to human 
frailties and susceptibilities to pain and lapses, that no 

192 



Modern Demand for the Virtue of Cheerfulness 193 

amount of Christian or any other science can quite do away 
with. The stern effort to deny them in ourselves or ignore 
them in our next friends acts something like the cup of cold 
water at the feast or an icy veil of concealment through 
which the warmest sympathies of the soul can not penetrate. 

It may be true enough that the divinest sympathy will 
declare itself along the line of the glad hosannas Avhen we 
shall become as the angels, or even the good and trusting 
humans that we ought to be. But while the shades of the 
prison house cling about us and make pitfalls for our steps 
and graves for our loved ones, it does not seem strange that 
even the Master himself forgot the glory that was revealed 
to weep at the tomb of Lazarus, or groan in spirit over the 
sins and sufferings of a wandering world. Unquestionably, 
it was the tenderness of a sympathy born of this recogni- 
tion that knit him so closely in ties of love and friendship 
to the weeping sisters, Martha and Mary. 

It is a truth which any one may test for himself that, 
whatever pseons may be sung to the cheerful friend, it is the 
one who turns to you in sorrow that most stirs the deeps of 
tenderness, sympathy and affection in the soul. 

There is a chill, therefore, in any philosophy which meets 
the troubles and sorrows of an imperfect world with the 
calm claim that they are nonexistent. It well justifies the 
recent sage reflection that "heights of philosophy are good 
places on which to freeze." But more than that, it misses 
the true height and depth of human philosophy which ever 
takes into account the finite mysteries, the tears in things 
and the inevitable sadness that springs from what is best 
and greatest in man himself. Carlyle recognizes this when 
he says, "Man's unhappiness comes in part from his great- 
ness." 

A later than Carlyle, in the teeth of all the present pro- 



194< Modern Demand for the Virtue of Cheerfulness 

test, gives mnn porniissiou to admit liis ills and even turn 
them to account in the world. "Why should avc wish to 
conceal the fact that we have suffered, that we suffer, that 
we are likely to suiter to the end?" says Benson, who strikes 
almost the INliltonic note in the "Sable Goddess" behalf. 
"There is a significance in suffering. It is not all a clumsy 
error, a well-meaning blunder. It is a deliberate part of 
tlie constitution of the world." To wisely weigh our sorrow 
witli our comfort, he holds, with Shakespeare, the logical 
course. And for those who scorn such concession to "self- 
asserted ills," he comes back with yet finer scorn in his own 
gentle and inimitable fashion : "My belief is this," he writes : 

"As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a cer- 
tain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow. 
I see that many people find the world dreary, some find it 
interesting, some surprising, some find it entirely satisfac- 
tory. But those who find it satisfactory seem to me as a 
rule to be natures who do not trouble their heads very much 
about other people, but go cheerfully and optimistically on 
their way, closing their eyes as far as possible to things 
painful and sorrow^ful." "Well, to speak very sincerely and 
humbly, such a life," he adds, "seems to me the worst kind 
of a failure." And as to the call for happiness every- 
where, he writes : "The only happiness worth seeking for 
is a happiness which takes all these dark things— in the track 
of suffering and the most sorrowful m3'stery of death— 
into account, looks them in the face, reads the secret of their 
dim eyes and set lips, dwells with them and learns to be tran- 
quil in their presence." 

Faith and philosophy may soothe in time, but the}' can 
not do away with the reality of our pains and losses. The 
very science Avhich proposes to do this for us in many re- 
spects only bewilders. It is as Benson says: "More and 



Modern Demand for tlic Virtue of Clieerftdness 1*J5 

more wc feel tlie impenetrability of the mystery that sur- 
rounds us ; the discoveries of science, instead of raising tlie 
veil, seem only to make the problem more complex, more 
bizarre, more insoluble." The form of so-called science, 
which takes refuge in denials and assertions buck of experi- 
ence, though coniniendably enough reaching out to the mind 
of God for illumination, in no way clears up the problem 
which the claims of infinite love ynd infinite power b)-ing 
to the entrance of so much that is not love into the scheme 
of being. To trace it to "a misunderstanding of the truth 
of being," is only to push the question a step farther back 
and leave the finite mind still pondering why the trutii of 
being was not made clear to it at the outset. Aye, and who 
is to be trusted to make it clear now.'' 

Only I discern 
Infinite passion and the pain 
Of finite hearts that yearn, 

says Browning, and the wisest of our teachers do not seem 
to discern much more. To grant us some hours of sadness, 
and some hearts to con)e closer for the sympathy in it, is 
therefore a part of our human heritage which should not be 
taken from us. Since man was made a little lower than the 
angels, some sympathy with dust as well as deity seems es- 
sential for that perfect understanding which is the basis of 
perfect love anywhere. 

"The trouble with perfect people," says a scornful Philis- 
tine, "is that they expect too much of their friends. They 
demand that you shall be as good as tlie}^ and good in tiie 
same way, otherwise they throw you into the Irish Sea." 
The friend who will take us as we are and not demand, like 
the photographers, that we shall look pleasant despite all 
that nature and time may be doing to prevent it, is the one 



196 Modern Demand for the Virtue of Cheerfulness 

to come closest to us after all. There is a hint for the 
modern philosophers in the frankness of the woman who re- 
plied to the photographer's request that she assume a more 
pleasing expression, "I suppose I can do it if you insist, but 
I can tell you right now it won't look like me." 

Shadow and sunshine, smiles and tears, enter so inerad- 
icably into the fabric of life that the person who wears the 
smile that won't come off has too much the character of the 
figure on a billboard for yearning, throbbing humanity to 
take him very tenderly to heart. There is truth, no doubt, 
in Dr. Johnson's assertion that the habit of looking on the 
bright side of things is worth a thousand pounds a year, 
but only he who recognizes that there is another side can 
do this to any saving purpose in the world of men. One 
must go to the deeps of sorrow to declare the sublimity of 
joy. Denying or ignoring the pains and wrongs and sor- 
rows of our common humanity can never reach the heart of 
the trouble. The Christ himself, as a late writer saj^s, in- 
stead of denying, "met them face to face, with perfect di- 
rectness, perfect sympathy, perfect perceptions." "But he 
made allowance for weakness and despaired of none. He 
proved that nothing was unbearable, but that the human 
spirit can face the worst calamities with an indomitable sim- 
plicity which adorns it with an imperishable beauty and 
proves it to be indeed divine." 

This seems to be the true basis for that cheerful spirit 
which is so largely in demand. But it is not exactly the one 
that the professedly and professionally cheerful person lays 
down for us, and that is why some ungrateful souls, who do 
not recognize that at least his aims are good, call him alto- 
gether depressing. Another point in the philosophy which 
is too commonly ignored is the part which nature takes in 
fashioning man to his moods. "Some people are born to 



Modern Demand for the Virtue of Cheerfulness 197 

make life pretty and others to grumble tliat it is not pretty," 
says George Eliot, and though multitudinous counsels are 
brought to the help of the latter class, yet until the sur- 
geons take hold of them it is not probable that the responsi- 
bility can be entirely fastened upon them nor the happy 
thought cure be made very effective. 

They seem to be as incorrigible as the man who insisted 
upon hanging to a street car strap though the conductor 
pointed him to a vacant seat, because he was elected to "show 
tlie street car indignities" and proposed to say truthfully 
that he "had ridden downtown six successive days hanging to 
a strap." 

There are always some people who set out in plain dress 
and repellant exterior to find the seamy side of life and con- 
gregations, and they invariably find it. But they are 
hardly the ones who appeal to us in the tender fashion of 
George Eliot's heroine, who whispers, "Pray make a point 
of liking me, in spite of my deficiencies," or can fathom the 
great poet's meaning when he said that next to the pleasure 
of love is its pain. A shallow pessimism and a shallow op- 
timism alike miss the true meaning and grandeur of life. 
Likewise they miss that finer understanding upon which hu- 
man ties and friendships are based, and that subtle and 
pensive spell which the very sense and mystery of mortality 
brings to the "bright glints of immortality" flashing for- 
ever through the fleshly bars. 

Even worldly prosperity, which lifts a friend too absorb- 
ingly into the sunlight lessens ofttimes the tender tie that 
other days have bound. It can be nothing else than this 
that gave us that dreary maxim of La Rochefoucauld which 
submits that "in the adversity of our best friends we often 
find something that is not exactly displeasing." That they 
will come nearer to us in sorrow than in joy may be a selfish 



198 Modern Demand for the Virtue of Cheerfulness 

feeling, but it proclaims a human truth that philosophy can 
not afford to ignore. It is interwoven for some purpose in 
that grand virtue of sympathy wherein lies man's true great- 
ness and chance of usefulness to his fellow-men. And herein 
consists the danger of any code of life that would separate 
itself from human conditions and needs, and deny both ex- 
istence and sympathy to such conditions. For the author 
is right who says : "We can not solve the mystery of this 
difficult world ; but we may be sure of this, that it is not for 
nothing that we are set in the midst of interests and rela- 
tionships, of liking and loving, of tenderness and mirth, of 
sorrow and pain." If we are to get the most and best out 
of life we must not seclude ourselves from these things. One 
of the nearest and simplest of duties is sympathy with others, 
and sympathy in no limited sense, but sympathy that we can 
only gain through looking at humanity in its wholeness. 



ENCHANTMENT OF THE GREEN-ROBED FOREST 
MONARCHS 

RUSKIN is right. It was a beautiful thing when God 
thought of a tree. Of all the pageant train of nature 
that puts on the bloom and splendor of Litanias courts to 
keep the summer festival, this monarch of the forest strikes 
deepest into the heart of earth, as it also climbs highest into 
the blue of heaven. The daisies and the buttercups nestle 
close to the ground ; even the lilies and the roses come and 
go in transient fellowship with the sod and the grass on the 
hillside withers at the parched earth's breath or "the wind 
passes over it and it is gone." But "the green-robed sen- 
ators of mighty woods, branch-charmed by the earnest 
stars, dream on and on" in the azure deeps of heaven, and 
by a myriad finger points of verdant green and airy light- 
ness lift man farthest from the earth. No doubt it is this 
close communion with the skies, and all the whispering voices 
of the upper air, which has given to these high priests of 
nature the "anciently reported spells" which Druids and 
sibyls sages and seers, poets and mystics of all ages have 
ascribed to them. Nor can these fair humanities of old 
religions quite forsake their haunts in "piny mountain" or 
"forest by slow stream." Still, a presence is in the silent 
wood, a sense of life "more deep and true" than any mortal 
knows is in the trusting sway of the delicate branches to any 
softest breeze or rushing whirlwind of the skies that may 
sweep over them. And science tells us, could we but turn 
less sense-dulled ears to their whispering voices, the very 

199 



200 Enchantment of the Green-Robed Forest Monarchs 

music of the spheres would come down to us on their eolian 
harps of melody. Such secrets as the talking oaks of 
Dodona revealed to the ancient Greek, may verily belong to 
their high union with the heart of nature, could souls as kin 
to them as the nature-loving Greeks once more be found. 
Closest in all the symbolism of the outside world to the inner 
verities the history of the tree might almost stand for the 
history of man in all his mortal hopes and strivings. Not 
only in his early Eden did it play sentinel and second in his 
spirit gains and losses, but all along the path of history in 
his failing like the green bay tree, his failing like "the leaves 
that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa." The mysteries of 
ancient faiths, the oracles of the gods, the secrets of the 
under world, were whispered man from the leafy temples of 
Egeria, the sacred oaks of Dodona, and written on the 
sibylline leaves of nature everywhere. In the gardens and 
groves of Sophocles the heavenly muse decended to mortal 
man, and in the Arcadian forest the pipe of Pan first woke 
the world to tuneful melody. Woodland bowers for lovers, 
forest temples for gods, classic elms for scholars, aye, char- 
ter oaks "for nations, and immemorial pines as sentinels of 
the ages, have been so much a part of the world's history 
that the best of life would seem to have been lost if simply 
tlie tree in the midst of all earth's gardens had been "caught 
away" from sinful man, though all the sweet flowers and 
grasses of the field had still remained to him. 

Beautiful glooms, soft drinks in the noonday fire, 
Woodland privacies, closets of lone desire. 
Emerald twilights, 
Virginal shy lights. 
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows 
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colon- 
nades 



Enchantment of the Green-Robed Forest Monarchs 201 

Of the dim, sweet, woods, of the dear, dark woods, 
Of the heavenly woods and glades. 

Such sanctuary does the forest offer to the yearning heart 
of man, while, in the "passion of the groves" a myriad winged 
things in leafy bough or covert thrill to the soul of love and 
waft the choral strain far up to the blue empyrean. " 'Tis 
love creates the woodland melody," said the season's poet, 
Thomson, "and all this waste of music is the voice of love." 

How naturally must the ancient oak record the secrets 
of the eternal love, and if in days of human innocence it whis- 
pered them to kin and trusting creatures, the miracle was 
not so strange a one. A "talking oak" that was wiser than 
any talking man or woman in the world, is something that 
"the intelligible forms of ancient poets" found not so diffi- 
cult to mingle with the faith, which held "that every flower 
enjoys the air it breathes." 

"He who forgets the tree under whose shade he gamboled 
in the days of his youth is a stranger to the sweetest im- 
pressions of the human heart," says one of the kin spirits to 
"the venerable brotherhood of trees." It is a beautiful play 
upon the same chord, too, which led the Arabian poet to 
greet the solitary palm tree at Seville with a cry of sympa- 
thy and fellowship in its lonely and alien estate. "O palm 
tree !" he moans, in uncontrollable sorrow, "like myself, thou 
art alone in this land; thou also art away from thy kin- 
dred. Thou weepest and closest the calix of thy flowers. 
Why? Dost thou lament the generating seed scattered on 
the mountains?" And the tree made answer: "Yea, I do; 
for, although they all may take root in a congenial soil, like 
that watered by the Euphrates, yet orphans are they all, 
since Beni Abba has driven me away from my family." Less 
gentle, yet full of the same human sympathy, is the answer 



202 EncJiantiiu'iit of tlw Green-Robed Forest Monarehs 

which the giant oak in the Merlin idyll makes to the false 
Vivian, who would steal the enchanter's spell. Challenging 
all earth and heaven to blast her "brain to cinder" if she 
lies, suddenly the tree that shone "white listed through the 
gloom, with deafening crash darts spikes and splinters of 
the wood the dark earth round," till Vivian, dazed by the 
"livid flickering fork and deafened with the stammering 
crack," flings herself upon jNIerlin's mercy and protection. 
Nor does the raging cease till Merlin himself "o'er talked 
and overworn" by the beguiling Vivian, yields up the charm, 
and sinks "as lost to life, and use, and name, and fame," in 
the riven oak's bosom. Tree and enchanter go down to- 
gether, and who shall say that the same pain of ruin and 
defeat does not rini through the kindred life-currents in 
each.'' And, for the joy of life, and all that youth and love 
can dream of being's crown, let loose a Rosalind and Orlando 
in the forest of Arden, and see how truly the "trees become 
the books" the "barks, the thoughts," and every eye in the 
forest "the Mdtnesses'' that deify the name of Love and 
Rosalind. Or, drop some brooding Jaques "under an oak, 
whose antique root peeps out upon the brook that brawls 
along the wood," and watch him "lose and neglect the creep- 
ing hours of time" in its soft murmuring of immemorial 
days and endless summer calm. How truly do the "incom- 
municable trees," by some finer sense than speech, still call 
to us to come and live with them and "quit our weary, worry- 
ing life of solenm trifles." And most when spring and the 
warm south wind stirs with one breath the sap in the maple 
and the blood in the impassioned soiil of man, does the cry 
of Amiens ring through the land. 

Come hither, come hither, come hither, 
lender the greenwood tree. 
Who loves to lie with me. 



Enchantment of the Green-Robed Forest Monarchs 203 

And tune hi.s nieny noto 
Unto the sweet bird's throat; 

Here sfiall he see 

No enemy. 

Alas, that so many a shepherd and courtier alike should 
be in "too parlous a state" to accept so gracious a call. 
The Arden forest is still "a geographical pu/zle" to most 
hearers, and to "loiter in its tangled glens and magnificent 
depths," when all the captains of fortune and industry are 
rallj'ing their hosts for battle is held fit only for "the fool, 
the motley fool," that Jaques met in the forest. Only the 
crown of wild olive, that came after war and toil "to cool 
the tired brow through a few years of peace," can even re- 
motely appeal to the driven multitude to-day, from the 
whole brotherhood of trees, and Ruskin has a strenuous 
time in bringing even that home to them. "Will you, still 
throughout the puny totality of your life weary yourselves 
in the fire of vanity.''" he sternly asks. "Was the grass of 
the earth made green for your shroud only, not for your 
bed.'' And can you never lie down upon it, but only under 
it.'' The heathen, to whose creed you have returned, thought 
not so. They knew that life brought its contest, but they 
expected from it also the crown of all contest. No proud 
one, no jeweled circlet flaming through heaven, above the 
height of the unmerited throne ; only some few leaves of wild 
olive cool to the tired brow through a few years of peace. 
. . . This, such as it is, you ma}' win while yet you live — 
type of honor and sweet rest." It is strange that with the 
Christian centuries the mission of the sacred grove is so 
lost to man. 

"The olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where 
the attic bird trills her thick warbled notes the summer 
long." How far in the dim past it lies! 



204 Enchantment of the Green-Robed Forest Monarchs 

In such green palaces [says Waller] the first kings reigned, 
Slept in their shades and angels entertained, 
With such old counsellors they did advise, 
And by frequenting sacred groves grew wise. 

The Hebrew story itself hides the secret of all life in the 
mystic tree, the tree of life in the midst of the garden ; and, 
shining through all the phantasmagorie of the dreamy 
John's apocalyptic vision, rises again the symbolic tree, the 
tree of life, "on either side of the river," and "in the midst," 
now, "of the paradise of God." Why should the Bible 
Christian yield up to David, priest or pagan, "the presence 
in the wood," the tongues in trees, and human good and 
kinship in everything, especially when not an aspen "dusks 
and shivers" without breathing of the sacred crosg and all 
the love of heaven let down to earth in the wondrous life, 
yielding itself for man on the sorrowful tree. Not alone 
in deference to the crown of wild olive, but to the crown 
of thorns, might a Christian artist bespeak surcease to 
tyranny and strife and selfishness, and a return to sweet 
peace and love and heavenly trust within the templed groves 
and pillared aisles of the great All Father. "Free-hearted- 
ness and graciousness and undisturbed trust and requited 
love and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry 
to pain — these," says Ruskin, "and the blue sky above j^ou, 
and the sweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath ; and 
mysteries and presences innumerable of living things" in 
wood and wold — "these may yet be your riches, untorment- 
ingly and divine; serviceable for the life that now is, and 
not without promise of that which is to come." 

Again the bud is on the bough, 
The leaf is on the tree. 



Enchantment of the Green-Robed Forest Monarchs 205 

And to the quickened heart of man "the south wind brings 
warmth and desire." Many voices call in many varjung 
strains to tired and wayworn souls. But the poet strikes the 
keynote to the true harmony and refreshment when he sings : 

O, good eartli, warm with youth, 

My childhood heart renew, 
Make me elate, sincere. 

Simple and glad as you, 

(), waters running free, 

With full exultant song. 
Give me for worn-out dream, 

Life that is clean and strong. 



THE SALUTARY INFLUENCE OF THE SPIRIT OF 
THE WINDS 

THE wind that bloweth where it listeth certainly does 
make havoc of human calculations. It was an ancient 
wise man who said he that observeth the wind shall not sow. 
The futility' of human science and resource in the face of 
nature still declares itself in tlie words of another venerable 
sage who says "they who plow the sea do not carry the winds 
in their hands." By land or water the wind roams free and 
furnishes every freedom-loving soul of earth the crowning 
simile for his dream or song. 

"I must have liberty withal, as large a charter as the 
wind," cries the awakened mortal in the green forest of Ar- 
den, and the specified privilege '"to blow on whom I please" 
is one much coveted no doubt by other than Arden dream- 
ers. To "go the wind's way,'' to be "free as the wind when 
the heart of the twilight is stirred" is an impulse known to 
other than the children of "vagabondia," though a majority 
of earth's children are fairly content if the kindly >dnd will 
but come their way in some free and generous fashion. The 
crowning worth of it in all human life and enjoyment can 
never be told, but may be strongly guessed by what the want 
of it means in any region of the earth. Stagnation and 
death settle down upon any spot where the still air receives 
no purifying current in the reviving breeze. The scorching 
simoon, or the raging blizzard are more merciful than the 
becalmed sea to human life, and the ancient poets who 
claimed fellowship with "brother wind" were not far wrong 
in the relationship. 

206 



Tlie Salutary Influence of the Sinrit of the Winds 207 

It is not alone in death valleys or the silent sea of the 
Ancient Mariner that the life ministry of the wind declares 
itself by its absence. Strike camp in the southwestern 
portion of the Lone Star State for instance when summer 
suns burn hot and wait for the gulf breeze to find you, and 
"brother wind" will claim your love and reverence forever. 
"In fact "forty thousand brothers with all their quantity 
of love" could not make up the sum of comfort and delight 
this embracing breeze brings with it. There is a luxury and 
friendliness and life spell in it that verily docs seem to give 
it a human character and purpose in its relation to men. 
It even seems to war with the fiery and adverse elements 
which the scorching land interposes. It is a curious fea- 
ture of the air currents in this semitropic region that they 
will blow hot and cold almost in the same breath and even 
while a blast as from a red-hot furnace touches your brow, 
a cooling wave sweeps over it and claims the life victory. 
It is night, however, that perfects its reign. All the fiery 
cohorts of flaming day withdraw when the "hindmost wheels 
of Phoebus' wain" sink over the western horizon and leave the 
grateful earth to the ministry of winds and waves that never 
slumber. 

Sweeter than the murmur "of doves in immemorial elms" 
is the soft play of the breeze through the feathery boughs 
of the mesquite trees that abound in this region. The 
rhythm of it, in the heart of such a forest, is .soft and regular 
and soothing as the plash of the waves upon some sea-washed 
shore. Indeed, so like the murmur of waters is it that some 
call of the "deep entreating sea" seems ever sounding 
through it, yet with a tone so soft that no dream is lost in 
its bosom. Nights that would be unendurable, days that 
would savor of Gehenna, are thus made glorious by what 
men call the "vagrant winds," and beyond all of nature's 



208 The Salutary Influence of the Spirit of the Winds 

forces commit to the fitful and elusive things of time — some- 
times even the most malign agencies in time's path. Indeed, 
all powers of good or evil, love or hate, are commonly sym- 
bolized by them. From spirit birth to withering death writ- 
ers, sacred and profane, make the winds their interpreters. 
As the wind that bloweth where it listeth and ye can not 
tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth, so is every one 
that is born of the spirit, says the sacred word, in one 
strain, and in another pictures man as a flower of the field, 
that "the wind passeth over and it is gone." The poets in 
their own strong way repeat the opposing measures: 

Swift wind of God 
Quickening the clod, 
Give of the heavens strong 
My heart a song, 

writes one, and another cries bitterly : 

O summer, weep to see the havoc done 

By cruel winds that hate thy benison. 

Beauty, andi innocence, and hope, are slain. 

Something that hateth God's fair' universe 

Hath set on summer's brow the winter of its curse. 

Thus in his blindness and his joy or sorrow man hunts 
his God in the winds, and, from red man to white man, finds 
him benevolent or malevolent, much as the winds blow fierce 
or gentle. That any God of his worship rides in the whirl- 
wind the best of saints rather shudder to believe, and an 
angry Pan "stamping his hoof in. the night thicket" still 
lingers in the minds of many who inquire too curiously 
whence the wind cometh that makes cities crumble and man 
perish like a flower in its path. Neither science nor theol- 
ogy can master the problem of the winds, and to give them 



Tlie Salutary Influence of the Spirit of the Winds 209 

over to art and the common pathway they are graciously 
disposed to travel is no doubt the better part of that wis- 
dom that is humble that it knows no more. At any rate it 
is here emphatically that "the troubled and uncertain ele- 
ment" in which we dwell calls, as Stevenson noted, for some- 
thing that reason can not satisfy and art and human ex- 
perience can turn to the best use. The poet knows this 
who says: 

Wind, breathe thine art 
Upon my heart ; 

Blow the wild sweet in, 
Let my song begin. 

What the winds bring to quicken both soul and body is 
of more interest to the children of earth than any knowledge 
of whence they come or whither they go. They have strains 
for all moods, and what they bring depends on what they 
find, somewhat as Ingersoll noted when he said: "Stand by 
the seashore, and what its wind-swept waves say to you will 
depend on what you are and what you have suffered." Yet 
in this "rhythm of land and sea" sounds forever, as in the 
quiring stars, that harmony that is in immortal souls, and 
more closely than the stars it brings the appeal home to 
man. 

It is no idle fancy of a local enthusiast which connects 
what he calls "the variety of sunny South Texas" with the 
soft gulf breezes that sweep over the wide plains and breathe 
in very truth the rhythm of both land and sea into human 
hearts and lives. "In this 'land of heart's delight,' " he 
says, "I have the feeling of being in an atmosphere of so- 
cial sanity," and he calls to the nerve-racked denizens of the 
turbulent cities to flee from their discordant world into this 
wind-swept realm of happiness and harmony. It is verily 
the wind's call turned to place and people as the wind knows 



210 Till' Snlutari/ Influence of the Sjnrit of the Winds 

lu)W. Sooivt and vnnnblo as arc all its ways, it has a subtle 
powcM- of a(lai)tin^' itsrlf ti) all the varied phases of human 
life and sun-ouiidin^-. Out of the north eoineth the whirl- 
wind, says the Clooci Hook, and though fortunately Brother 
Wind does not always present himself in quite such stirring 
fashion to the Northern man, yet he has a breezy note that 
fits the sturdy Northern nature better than the soft strains 
of the South. This Swinburne reeoi>ni/es. Winds from 
the nortli and the south eanie to the making- of man, he 
tells us. "They breathed upon his mouth; they filled his 
body with life." Surely, too, they left their spell upon him, 
for while the sharp breeze of the North is life and joy to the 
child reji of the North, for natures "sloping to the South- 
ern side" the languorous airs and balmy zephyrs that come 
from sun-kissed gulfs and tropic seas bring truer bene- 
dictions. 

Out of his ver^'^ j*^.^'^ ^^^^^^ pains man plays into this spirit 
of the winds. Hurt souls seek ever, like the heart-sore King 
Arthur, some "island valley of Avalon where never wind 
blows coldly," while to the strong and heartwhole rings 
cheeriest the Zincale cry, "Tliere's- a wind on the heath, 
brother, there's a wind on the heath," and tramping the 
gi'cat North road seems the crowning bliss of being. That 
"joy of movement free," which one poet notes makes man kin- 
dred to the winds and to the sea, is strongest, no doubt, in 
strongest lives and natures, where health of both body and 
mind reigns unshaken. Breathing the North winds, defy- 
ing the bli/zard, "wantoning with the breakers" has a fas- 
cination for healthy and adventurous mortals. It is, as 
Stevenson observes, the pampered and enervated children 
of hot house airs and luxuries who cower behind walls and 
sealed windows when the Avind roars its challenge to the 
strong. "Shrilly sovuid Pan's pipes ; and behold, the banker 



The Salutary Influence of the Spirit of the Winfls 211 

instanhly concealed in the bank parlor!" he exclainis, and 
no doubt the ecstasies as perchance some of the agonies of 
life are missed thereby. 

Certainly the sum of human experience is sensibly dimin- 
ished by any feeble or midway course or custom which re- 
fuses to take the rough with the smooth, the terror with the 
delight, which the winds of heaven and the winds of destiny 
have brought to the making of life on this earthly planet. 
Fortunately, the homely old adage which declares it an ill 
wind that blows nobody any good favors a gracious ac- 
ceptance of the wind's way, even where least desired, and 
though it may be mixed up with all man's moods and im- 
pulses, it curiously escapes connection with his evil tempers 
and arraigrunents of fate in finer spirits. Shakespeare gives 
a true expression of this when he makes the houseless King 
Lear, exposed to the raging blasts of winter, murmur sadly, 
"Blow, winds ! rage ! blow ! I tax not you, you elements, with 
unkindness," And again in the familiar lines in "As You 
Like It": 

Blow, blow, tliou winter wind. 
Thou art not so unkind 
As man's ingratitude. 

The sentiment, if not the strain, is caught by a modern 
writer who said of a Turkish outbreak, "A whirlwind or 
earthquake is found to be kind, gentle and soothing com- 
pared with a Moslem." The poet who in her recent song 
imputes the nature of human hate to the raging winds strikes 
a different note from the majority of earth's singers. In 
measures grave or gay they follow the wind's free way be- 
yond the narrow bounds of the moralities, with their weary 
burden of good and evil, love and hate. But it is Henry 
Borrow who really chases it down to its true place in the 



212 Tlie Salutary luflitcnce of the Spirit of the Winds 

M'orld of nature and life. And so we come back to the great 
North road and the gypsy's song: 

There's niglit and day, brother, 

Both sweet things ; 
There's sun, moon and stars, brother — 

All sweet things. 
There's a wind on the heath, brother, 

A wind on the heath. 
And just to liear that I would 

Gladly live forever. 



THE SECRETS OF NATURE AS REVEALED BY 
THE NIGHT 

NOT the least of the boons the summer holds for man 
is acquaintance with the night. A "dead, monotonous 
period" to people "who cower under roofs" during much of 
the year, night becomes the hour of luxurious comfort, 
beauty and infinite outreaches of being when summer opens 
her starry realms of endless space, and quietude, and gran- 
deur, to mortal sense and sight. Most any of earth's chil- 
dren feel the great thoughts of space and eternity in the 
majestic hour somewhal as Walt Whitman did when he ex- 
claimed in his night watch on the prairie, "How plenteous ! 
how spiritual. I was thinking the day most splendid till 
I saw what the not day exhibited. I was thinking this 
globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless around me, 
myriads of other globes." 

But even for those whose thoughts and feelings stray no 
farther tlian their own hushed little globe, summer night's 
peace and loveliness enfolds them like a spell. Shapes and 
moving shadows take on the enchantment of a new and airy 
world which Shakespeare himself could scarcely portray. 
The commonest domestic animal moves like a milk white 
doe through rustling branches or thickets and the veriest 
freak in human form ma}' claim the poet's benediction : 
"Bless thee bottom ; bless thee ! thou art translated." The 
waking senses feel no need of slumber for any perfection of 
rest, or if perchance "an exposition of sleep" comes over 
them, the dream it induces is "past the wit of man to report," 

213 



814 The St'i'irts of Natnn- tis Hevealed h// tin- yiijUt 

SI) siil)llv Is il inixrd \>illi all I hi' nivslic inlluriiri's iti wn- 
turo's outdoor world. Tlir smuiucr world whirh at last 
has uooi'd iiu'ii Iroiii lashioiiublr holi'ls and count fy palaces 
ii\to fields and forests, where "(irod keeps open house" is re- 
storing- a long" lost wealth of beauty and strength that the 
childiin of the morning- knew in their open tents, and tlicir 
mossy pillows, and their altar stairs of worship which, like 
Jacob's ladder, climbed nighily to the stars. 

The span of life which stretched on into the centuries 
may well connect itself with this tent and outdoor life of 
patriarch and Arab. It is certain that the civili/ed life 
that shut man away from nature's closest ministry began at 
once to shorten his days and rob his nights of their life-giv- 
ing" power. For, as Stevenson says, "what seems," ayo 
what is "a kind of temporal death to people choked between 
walls and curtains is only a light aud living- slumber to the 
man who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear nature 
breathing deeply and freely and even as she takes her rest 
she turns and smiles, and there is one stirring hour unknown 
to those who dwell in houses when a wakeful life influence 
goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere which all outdoor 
creatures feel." It is then, he says, that "men who have 
lain dowiA with the fowls open their dim eyes and behold the 
beauty of the night." It is then that they share some life 
thrill of mother earth hAow their resting bodies. It is a 
"nightly resurrection" wrapped in the deep mysteries of 
nature which "even shepherds and old country folk best 
read in these arcana can not fathom." Yet any child of 
earth may share it with all outdoor creatures if, wooed by 
the sunnner night, he will leave his stifling- walls and cur- 
tains and lie down in the open starlight and become "for the 
time being a sheep of nature's flock.'' It seems to be a 
part of nature's generous off'eriiigs that they are freest to 



The Secrets of Nature as Revealed by the Night 215 

the humblest and, as the student of her night gifts and 
glories declares in "Love's Labour Lost," 

Those earthly godfathers of heaven's lights, 

That give a name to every fixed star, 
Have no more profit of their shining nights 

Than those that walk and wot not what they are. 

It is true enough of life's rarest offerings that ofttimes 
"Light seeking light doth light of light beguile," and to let 
"soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet har- 
mony" in troubled breasts, without asking how or why is the 
true Arden philosophy which the "fool in the forest" under- 
stands perchance better than the sage. The sound which 
is back of silence in all creation's bounds stirs in the pulse 
of night as if a myriad insect throats and whirring wings 
were striving to keep tune with the very music of the spheres. 
Every leaf and blade is alive with these tiny choristers, 
bringing to the soft night, freed from the din of garish day, 
touches of sweet harmony that only those who go out into 
the bosom of night can ever know. The wonder of it breaks 
like a revelation from the unseen upon the unaccustomed 
ear, nor can any amount of familiarity destroy the spell of 
the universal and the invisible which throbs in undertones 
to the music of the world. What gifts of grace attend the 
tremulous strains for mortal beings Wordsworth noted well 
when he said of nature's sweest child: 

"The stars of midnight shall be dear to her." 
"And beauty born of murmuring sound shall pass into 
her face." 

It is not sleep alone that acts as nature's sweet restorer 
in the stilly night. Sleep indeed is like a feverish night- 
mare without the soothing influence which wind and open 



216 The Secrets of Nature as Revealed hy the Night 

sky can bring to refresh the sleeper. And for those trou- 
bled moments when, as by some mystic summons, or strange 
unrest, the eyes flash open to the night, what in the most 
luxurious chamber can meet their gaze with the soothing 
spell of the calm, kindl}'' stars and all the "serene of heaven." 
Stevenson tells the story in his picture of night in the open. 
"This sudden awakening," he says, "comes as a pleasant in- 
cident. We are disturbed in our slumber only that we may 
the better and more sensibly relish it. We have a moment 
to look upon the stars, and there is a special pleasure in 
feeling that we share the impulses with all outdoor creatures 
in some quickening thrill of Mother Earth." He declares 
that he "thought with horror" of inns and houses, of "con- 
gregated nightcaps, and the nocturnal prowess of clerks and 
students, of hot theaters and pass keys and close rooms," 
It is thus that a few nights in the open will liberate man 
from the whole burden of his costly civilization and give him 
the "serene possession of himself" that heaven designed for 
him and society has been stealing away from him for many 
generations. 

Life, which moves in a circle, seerns slowly bringing men 
back to the open-air chamber from which the sons of the 
morning drew their strength and inspiration. Screened 
porches, roofless galleries, tents and outdoor cots furnish 
sleeping quarters for a large portion of the population in 
certain sections of the country, while camp life has claimed 
hundreds of those who once stifled themselves at inn and 
summer boarding place, where congregated night caps and 
clerks of startling nocturnal prowess profaned nature's 
sanctuaries of rest. The war upon tuberculosis and other 
diseases has added to the open-air movement in the life- 
saving resources of the race. Nevertheless, while many have 
sought the crowning wealth in nature's store, "yet still," 



The Secrets of Nature as Revealed by the Night 217 

as the old h\'mn 1ms it, "there's room for millions more," 
and when the dog star reigns in the sky the call of the night 
is emphasized by nature herself in the discomfort she drops 
down from her flaming suns upon the day. It is almost as 
if she would drive poor, plodding, unobservant mortals out 
into the realms of night to find the joy of being no day can 
unfold to them. "I have found I had discovered a new 
pleasure for myself," said Stevenson of his night in the open, 
and although he leaves his reader to guess what that pleas- 
ure was, he had no hesitancy in declaring that through it 
was opened to him the life that is "the most complete and 
free." 

But the half of life is known to one who reads its mean- 
ing only by day. "And who, and who, are the travelers.'"' 
asks the poet, that cover time's stages in the king's highway. 
"They are night and day and day and night." Why slight 
one of these "ancient cavaliers" because he walks in shadow? 
Burning midnight oil to him when he has stars for tapers is 
a poor human policy whereby even the wise have no doubt 
hurt his guiding power to wandering men. It may be that 
"Man-Afraid-of-the-Dark," as the children of nature re- 
gard the white brother who "cowers into his house" at night- 
time, has deprived night of some of its celestial ministries 
and raised up ghouls and goblins in its path that timorous 
mortals may have trouble to lay. Even the star-souled 
Milton declared that "when night darkens the streets, then 
wander forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence and 
wine," thus turning his eyes upon the evil and not the hal- 
lowed train that move in the path of night. But over all 
man's fears or visions comes that strain of the heavenly 
host which chose "the listening ear of night" for the sublim- 
est message ever conveyed to mortal man. 



J^IS Tlif Stiitfs of Xdtiiif (IS Unudlal btf tlir X'KjIit 

"It ctwnc ui>c)n tlu« midnight clear 
'I'hal glorious sDiii;' of olil" 

ixud thri)Ui;h "tho dead vast and midillo of the night" it still 
rings out the promise of peace anil gooil-will to men as no 
lunir of noisy day can repeat it. 



THE CHARM OV TfTE SOUTH TO THE NORTHERN 

VISITOR 

PLACJ'JS, like people, Ijave a genius of tfn-ir own. Geo- 
graphical lines are not all that mark localities, nor can 
the ablest of the writers define the special or controlling 
spell of different sections even of tlie same land. Innumer- 
able and eloquent efforts have been made to convey to the 
Northern man the charm of the South. To one who has 
never crossed the mystic border line the efforts are vain. 
Nature holds the secret in her own keeping. Her '! ;e en- 
chantments are for those who seek them on her own ground. 
They may come, as one poet perceives, with a "shock of 
wonder and delight in which the traveler learns that he has 
passed the indefinable line that separates South from North." 
"A color, a flower, a scent" may bring this delicious con- 
sciousness, or it may not break upon him until "one fine 
morning lie wakes up with the Southern sunshine peeping 
through the jjersiennes and the Southern patois confusedly 
audible below his windows." But whenever or however it 
comes it will not be like anything he has found in books or 
could have laid hold of in any day, but from present con- 
sciousness. The best his pleasant Southern tourist books 
may liave done for him is to make liim "prick u|j his ears" 
at the enthusiasm in the very name of the South and be- 
come as anxious to seek out beauties and get by heart the 
lines and characters of the place, as if he had been told that 
it was all his own. 

Yet, after all, it is not the books, but the conformation 

219 



220 Charm of the South to the Northern Visitor 

of his own feelings which makes this magic sense of pos- 
session lay hold of him. For whether it be the wide, free 
welcome of the Southern sunshine, or the generous open 
kindliness of the warm Southern heart, there is a sweet sense 
of coming into his own which the traveler experiences under 
Southern skies, as nowhere else in his wandering. It is as 
Stevenson says, though only experience can confirm it, "even 
those who have never been there before feel as if they had 
been, and every one goes comparing and seeking for the 
familiar and finding it with such ecstasies of recognition, 
that one would think they were coming home after a weary 
absence." 

It is like trying to define the indefinable, however, to at- 
tempt to explain the cause of all the compelling sweetness 
that lays hold of one in the Southern world. The writers 
who tell us that atmosphere is the charm of the South and 
give it up at that, do perhaps, as well as the subtle case 
allows, although it is a little like saying that temperament 
is the gauge of the individual and leaving people who con- 
found it with tempers to make what they will out of it. A 
people subject to all the skyey influences its citizens may 
be in a marked degree, for whatever else may be said of the 
South, it is a region where you can never leave the sky out 
of the landscape, nor out of the brains and ways of men. 

Perhaps it is to the wide-awake Northerner that the un- 
paralleled wonders of the Southern sky make the strongest 
appeal. Its ethereal blue, with cloud argosies of white radi- 
ance floating through it by day, draw his gaze upward in 
defiance of the hottest sun. A vision of the sunset opens a 
realm of beauty and color in a myriad forms and tints al- 
most too bright, indeed, "for spotted man to intrude upon 
without novitiate and probation." Sometimes a round sil- 
very moon breaks in upon the scene, through floating waves 



Charm of the South to the Northern Visitor 221 

of rose or early stars peep through soft films of amber with 
the m^^stic glow and spell of worlds afar. "There are al- 
ways sunsets," says Emerson, "but it depends upon the 
mood of the man whether he shall see them," and the North- 
ern man, who stands entranced before the Southern sunset, 
must naturally wonder what is the mood of the many leisure- 
ly ones that pass him, in park, or plaza, or country byway, 
without a glance at the transcendant pageant in the eve- 
ning sky. The charm of atmosphere and light would seem 
to have reached a climax there, and all the community of 
men should be with the poet who says, "We leave the world 
of politics and personalities to penetrate bodily this incred- 
ible beauty; we dip our hands in this painted element and 
bathe our eyes in these lights and forms." 

If it is true that the hues of sunset make life great, the 
greatest style of heroes should be born under Southern skies. 
Here certainly, too, the stars "rain down an influence" that 
should lift man heavenward. Is there elsewhere to be found 
a spot where they shine so brightly as to stretch long shad- 
ows of tree or pillar that intercepts their rays.? The Lone 
Star State reveals such spectacle to wondering Northern 
eyes. The evening star blazes forth in the sky with a radi- 
ance that clearly outlines the shadow of vine or pillar on 
the Southern veranda, and has led some Northern eyes to 
hunt for a young moon to explain the strange effect. 

Set hours and iron rules, and stern edicts of powers that 
be, whereby life at every turn is controlled at the North, 
fall away like "rusty mail in monumental mockery," when 
once the opulence of sunlight or the breath of the magnolia 
proclaims that the land of Dixie has been safely reached, 
and the whole problem of existence is what "you all" would 
"like" in any matter. It need not be told, that "you all" 
soon fall into the ways of "we all" and grumble not at all 



222 Charm of the South to the Northern Visitor 

if the milk man, or the vegetable man, or the man of any 
trade or calling that serves sordid needs, come at all hours, 
or no hours, very much as the fancy takes him. There are 
always gardens of bloom, and beauty, and fragrance, where 
my lady may take her ease while servants loiter, and "a 
beaker full of the warm South," such as Keats prayed for, 
"with dance and song and sunburnt mirth" to refresh every 
creature, high or low. 

Occasionally some Nortliern woman refuses to fall in with 
the domestic spirit of the place and even upbraids her liege 
lord for taking life on its easy-going lines. But in the end 
the stars or melting suns "incline" her also when with the 
Romans (?) to do as the Romans, and she compromises with 
her past by telling how strange and lax the country's ways 
seemed to her when she first came — and thus she comes un- 
der the spell, instead of under the yoke, of daily life, with 
its sunrise and its sunsets, and all the shifting drama be- 
tween sun and sun. "It costs a rare combination of clouds, 
and lights to overcome the common and poor," says Emer- 
son, and he seems to be in touch with the Southern spirit 
when he adds, "What do you look for in the landscape, in 
sunsets and sunrises but a compensation for the cramp and 
pettiness of human performances." "The strenuous life," the 
mania for doing things, unquestionably pales unde tropical 
skies ; but in the rare combination of clouds and lights, 
nature truly makes compensations that beings of power and 
fancy to accept her aid, and follow her flights, can turn to 
better account than anything which the work-a-day world 
can off*er. "An armory of powei-s" she may indeed offer 
to the man of science who would "harness bird, beast and in- 
sect to his work," 

Prove the virtues of each bed of rock, 
And, like the chemist with his loaded jars. 



Charm of the South to the Northern Visitor 223 

Draw from each stratum its adapted use 
To drug his crops or weaken his arts withal. 

Yet it remains true that "nature serves us best when in 
her rarest beauty she speaks to the imagination and we feel 
that the huge heaven and earth are but a web drawn around 
us and that the light, the skies and the mountains are but 
the painted vicissitudes of the soul." Some of the Southern 
writers, and more than one of their poets, strike such a note 
in their sky-caught messages, and truly he has missed the 
truest inspiration of the land who has not felt some symbol 
or kinship of the soul uniting him to the light, the skies and 
all the web of beauty drawn about him. Like Father Tabb's 
sense of kinship with the violet, in a world of beauty beyond 
all worlds of utility, the ultimate truth of being comes to 
the soul as by a flash of heaven's own light that sets it free 
from the toilsome ways a.nd worries of homely life and sor- 
did ends. It is in the Southland if anywhere that men will 
find an answer to the long yearning cry, 

Has it a meaning after all. 

Or is it one of nature's lies, 
That net of beauty that she casts 

Over life's unsuspecting eyes.'' 

Some day, somewhere, when weary, toiling, money-grab- 
bing men find time to bring the powers within them, whether 
sharpened under northern skies or fancy-fired by southern 
moons and sunsets, into perfect touch with the "majestic 
beauties that daily wrap us in," they will surely escape the 
barriers that render them so impotent and learn for them- 
selves what "rainbows teach and sunsets show" of the eternal 
laws of beauty, truth and being, which are one. It is 
"sophistication and the second thought," the seers and psy- 



2^4 Chann of titr South to thr Xortlurn Visitor 

choU)^ists loll us, that shuts us away from beauty's power 
and prevents nature from entrancing us. Perhaps this is 
why to fresh Northern eyes and unsophisticated souls the 
all-embraoiug beauty of the semitropic world conies with an 
enchantment tluit the old resitient has in a measure lost. 
Anil yet the line of the Southerner for his home and land 
is something which befits the spell that nature has woven 
about them. It is not so strange that even a Northern 
statesman should have chosen "Dixie"' rather than ''The 
Star-Spangled Banner," "Hail Columbia" or any other 
Northern air as the intensest expression of patriotism and 
the love of onc\s native land the country furnishes. It 
seems to be with the Southerner as Ingalls said of the Kan- 
sMu in olden days. "He may wander. He may roam. He 
may travel. He may go elsewhere, but no other land can 
claim hin\ as a citizen. As the 'gray and melancholy main' 
to the sailor, the desert to the Bedouin, the Alps to the moun- 
taineer," so is the land of the palm tree and the pomegran- 
ate, the myrtle and the magnolia and the wide, white fields 
of cotton to all its children." 

It rouses aii allegiance that can never be foresworn. Un- 
consciously, too, the influences of earth tind air work 
changes in the human temper and outlook that the North- 
ern man's ready characterization of all life as "slow" but 
dinily fathoms. It is from an old Bengal poet that a cleAV 
may be found to the better meaning in the climatic influ- 
ences which bear upon the more easy-going life of the South. 
Out of his ancient comnumion with "Mother Earth, Father 
Sky, Brother Wind, Friend Light and Sweetheart Water" 
comes the simple but vital truth that it is "in the power of 
the good company of earth and sky, of wind, and light, and 
water, to rid man of the fear of poverty." This haunting 
fear which drives the Northern man continually along his 



Charm of the Soutli to the Northern Visitor 225 

hustling way seems verily to have lost its power in the good 
company of his beautiful earth, and sky, and light, with the 
Southern man. There is even a picturesque side to such 
poverty as may exist that fits into the landscape and makes 
it seem less squalid than under Northern skies. As Steven- 
son noted in the group of washerwomen relieved against the 
blue sky, some harmony of color is characteristic of the 
Southern garb, even when reduced to the scant lines of pov- 
erty. But, last of all, is the liberation of spirit which sim- 
plicity of wants brings to children of nature and the open 
air. And it takes the soft Southern skies to perfect that 
life. And as to the general activities and enterprises that 
enter into the little span of human life, why not accept the 
saving principle, born perchance of those skies, that noth- 
ing need be done in a hurry that can possibly be done slowly 
or even left undone. 



THE END AND ENDS OF LIFE 

TO be famous and to be loved were the modest boons the 
great Balzac asked of life. Both were granted him. 
Yet he died in bitter sorrow, pleading with his doctor for 
even six hours more of life. Fame had reached its brilliant 
culmination, love's long passion was crowned by marriage, 
the heavy burden of debt was lifted and the golden hour for 
the indulgence of his splendid genius just at hand when 
death dropped the curtain and tore him from all that was 
dear in life. Is it strange that he found it hard to go and 
leave so much beneath the friendly summer sun.'' Would it 
have been easier to loose his hold when clouds lowered, life's 
struggle seemed vain, and its burdens too heavy to be borne? 

It is for mortal man at his best estate to say, for the 
majorit}^ of great men go out by one or the other of these 
doors. To build the house beautifuland abide in it, to reach 
the mountain top and enjoy its star-charmed freedom and 
repose, is given to the merest fraction of the human race. 

Yet death is so busy with great and low alike in these 
latter days that its relation to life may Avell arouse fresh 
thought and questioning in human breasts. And surely the 
man who can see his earthl}^ hopes and desires realized even 
for one brief hour of the golden day, would seem more ready 
to say Avith Stevenson, "Glad did I live and gladly die" 
than he who must yield up this earthly chance with all the 
lonfi-ing-s of his soul unsatisfied. It mav be that to the ma- 
jority of earth's children the kindliest feature of the stern 
summons is in the poet's whisper, 

226 



The End and Ends of Life 

"Death comes to set thee free, 
Oh, nieet him cheerily, 
And all thy fears shall cease 
And in eternal peace 
Thy sorrows end." 

But tliis is not the happiest, the bravest, nor the truest note 
in mortal pathways. Not "eternal peace," not dreamless 
sleep, but the life more abundant is what strong souls de- 
sire and the achievement of life's ends in one stage of being 
is the best pledge of their achievement in another. By the 
very logic of existence it must be a sorrow and a loss to die 
with one true end of human life and joy unrealized. A man 
must win a man's joy here or nowhere, and there is a pathos 
unmeasured in the face of the countless lives that miss it — 
a crime unmeasured in the social wrongs and lunacies that 
conspire to frustrate it. Yet the crowning madness lies in 
tlie spiritless manner in which ordinary mortals yield up 
their birthright of joy at tlie beliest of a blind and sordid 
world with all "its sickly forms that err from honest na- 
ture's rule." 

"Let a man contend to liis uttermost for his life's set 
prize be it what it will," is the charge of a wise philosopher 
as well as a Christian poet. And the future doom of those 
who fail in this is told in the flaming lines, 

"They see not God I know, 

Nor all that ciiivalry of His, 

The soldier saints, who row on row, 

Burn upward to their point of bliss, 

Since the end of life being manifest. 

They had burned their way through the world to this." 

The pity of it is, though perhaps too, the glory, that 
men must burn their way through the stupid and jealous 



228 The End and Ends of Life 

world to most any point of bliss marked out for themselves. 
And as Browning held with Drummond that love is the great- 
est thing in the world it is there that he fixes the prize most 
to be sought by those who would mount upward in the 
path of being. As one of his best commentators notes, 
"For Browning love both symbolizes and arouses that thirst 
for the Infinite which is the primary need of humanity." 
And this claim is dimly confirmed in that ideal of purity 
and goodness which even the most commonplace lovers seek 
in each other. Yet nothing is so beset with difficulties, 
wrongs, and base suspicions, as love, and to "burn their 
way" through an uncomprehending world to it, has been 
the need of nearly all the famous lovers of history. As- 
suredly in studying the relations of life and death the nature 
of one's controlling affection is of all importance. For it 
is love that alone can conquer death and give the crowning 
evidence of immortality. All human history bears testi- 
mony to the divine truth that — "love, pure and true, is to 
the soul the sweet immortal dew, that gems life's petals in 
its hour of dusk." 

"If you would make out the tangled map of life," said a 
great preacher, "let love teach you," and surely if you 
would master the pass of death love must point the way. 
For "life is God and God is love," and nothing but his own 
weak surrender of his birthright can separate man from 
that life in love. The "unlit lamp and the ungirt loin" is 
the ground of loss here as elsewhere : What adverse fate 
and outside foes may wrest from the soul's desires here is 
sure to be regained hereafter. "There shall never be one 
lost good. What was shall live as before," and in the faith 
of that one may smile at the utmost that "envious and 
calumniating time" can do to rob the good and true of their 
ultimate and happy ends. Without this faith all human 



The End and Ends of Life 229 

life is a mockery and a traged}^, in the face of death. P'roni 
the physical standpoint no truer picture was ever drawn 
of it than Ingersoll offered at his brother's grave, when he 
said : "Whether in mid sea or among the breakers of the 
farther shore a wreck must mark at last the end of each 
and all. Every life, no matter if its every hour is jeweled 
with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad, and 
deep, and dark, as can be woven of the warp and woof of 
mystery and death." 

"Silence and pathetic dust" are indeed all that mortal 
man can see in his end save as the immortal spirit asserts 
its union witli the eternal goodness, the everlasting love. 



TWIN STARS IN I.OYE'S FIRMAMENT 

TRULY, the poetry of earth is never dead. The "Vita 
Nuova" is still the love poem of the ages. Its appeal 
is as direct and vital to the lovers of today as when the 
youthful Dante inscribed it to the fair Lady Beatrice 
through the mists of medieval thought and theology. It 
is interesting indeed, to find recently a theological journal 
bringing home this appeal to the men of our troubled hour, 
and casting the immortal role of the great Bard mainly in 
the realm of immortal love. For it is as a disciple of love 
that the writer in question considers Dante's relation and 
message to mankind and verily womankind may read be- 
tween the lines. 

Duly recognizing Dante's immortal fame, not only as a 
poet but as a prophet and pioneer of truth and freedom, 
the writer states "he was also an arch, lover, a tender, chaste, 
ardent disciple of love." And to point the moral of this 
phase of his renown he adds "his pure love, his obedient 
following of the light Beatrice shed upon his life are a con- 
stant challenge to every true man to follow the purest and 
brightest star that shines for his own soul." 

Many a poet and not a few philosophers have advanced 
such lofty views of love as make it the purest and bright- 
est star that shines for man's soul. But not all of these 
have ventured to advise man to follow it under the circum- 
stances which attended Dante's faithful devotion to his 
"Glorious lad3^" For this love of Dante's was certainly 
compassed about Avith many of those features that render 

230 



Twin Stars in Love''s Firmament 231 

irregular love such a firebrand to society that few writers 
can be found to courtesy to great kings or poets in its be- 
half. How such a love has come down the ages untainted 
by a single dark reflection may be due partly to the fine 
mysticism of the scholars who souglit to glorify it as a 
purely imaginary worship of some ideal of divine wisdom 
and goodness which the dreamy poet carried about in the 
recesses of his own brain. Added to this, of course, is what 
one writer calls the remoteness of its object, since it seems 
clear that Beatrice saw her lover but once or twice in her 
earthly form and semblance and not till she had enveloped 
herself in the heavenly did she give free expression to the 
love for which his ardent soul long yearned — a precaution 
which might indeed protect most lovers who wish to prose- 
cute a life affection without benefit of clergy. In fact, it 
is here that every Beatrice in love's calender should apply 
herself to the Dante School for her education, and, while 
men are learning how to follow the brightest star that shines 
for their souls, instruct herself in the nice business of keep- 
ing that star in the heavenly remoteness which zealous fol- 
lowing naturally requires. The reckless manner in which 
beautiful stars in love's firmament have fallen to earth or 
gone, like the lost pleiad, wandering in the void, for lack 
of the Beatricean secret of keeping both their lover and 
their orbit is woeful enough to make that glorious lady leave 
the high courts of the blessed to teach her sisters, as she 
taught her lover, what "love might be, hath been indeed 
and is" in its divine end and essence. 

That the most exquisite love-poem of the ages was given 
to setting forth this great truth has strangely availed lit- 
tle in woman's world, though Dante frankly admitted his 
obligations to Beatrice for the exaltation of their love and 
plainly sets forth her method of preserving it from all 



Twm Stars in Love's Firmament 

those woes and pitfalls that yawn for ardent lovers who go 
searching for love-light in the eyes of married women and 
intercepting their pathways in the street. There is some- 
thing deliciously honest and refreshing in that open manner 
in which he declares in the "Vita Nuova" his frequent efforts 
to win a glance from Beatrice in her walks, though only 
once did she favor him with a passing greeting. And yet 
there is evidence in the end of the story that she loved her 
strange dark lover — loved him well enough to come from 
the bowers of Paradise to hold him true to their love, and 
the moral of the matchless love-poem surely means as much 
to the woman as to the man in this question of truth to the 
soul's best star. 

To hold her lover to the heights is the only hope of any 
woman who finds herself in the path of an irregular love, for 
it is not clear at all that Dante himself would have behaved 
as he should if more encouragement had been given to his 
passionate pursuit of the lady of his "heart and mind," and 
by no means is it certain that he would have kept his wor- 
ship of her unchanged if she had stooped from her starry 
heights to satisfy in any way his earthly yearnings, how- 
ever fervently he might have importuned her thereto. It 
is meet that Dante students should do her honor by declar- 
ing that "she shines ever above the image of the poet him- 
self." For though poets and artists have placed her in the 
high heaven of love, yet to the lover more than to the lady 
has the world looked for the supreme lesson in human life 
and affection. It is a lofty moral which draws from this 
matchless love story a challenge to every true man to follow 
his soul's star. But the challenge to every true woman to 
preserve the soul's star undimmed may yet be the essential 
one in the making of any Dante, ancient or modern, in the 
Divine Comedy of life and love. 



POWER OF THE WRITTEN WORD 

BYRON was right. It is the drop of ink falling like 
dew upon a thought that counts. Buried in the brain 
of the thinker the finest thought loses its true force and 
purpose. Nothing is clearer than that "Thoughts shut up 
want air and spoil like bales unopened to the sun." 

Hence printers' ink will never lose its power and purpose 
in human lives. Nor yet will those who use it ever escape 
the tremendous responsibility that rests upon them. Stu- 
dents of historj^ have little difficulty in tracing the whole 
course of mankind to the ideals of youth which the written 
word fostered. The strange eclipse of liberalism and inter- 
nationalism, which, before this mad world war, promised 
so much for mankind, ma}' logically therefore be laid at 
the door of the "sentimental nationalism" which the litera- 
ture of the middle classes of Europe brought to bear upon 
the idealism of the hour. The broad patriotism which 
would make the world its country and the cause of human- 
ity its own, was lost for a time in that narrow nationalism 
of "my Country right or wrong" which has wrecked the 
cause of truth and justice through so many troubled ages 
of human history. 

Add to Balzac's statement that "the whole principle of 
good and evil lies in thought," the later writer's assertion 
that "the literary element rules the whole universe of 
thought," and Byron's idea of making humanity think, re- 
ceives its full endorsement. To bring the literary bibles 
to bear upon every creature's education becomes thus a first 

233 



234. Power of the Written Word 

principle of salvation even if the rising generation is in- 
clined to turn its back upon them. The fact is, too, that 
there is no saving line of thought that does not run back 
to them. There is some truth in Brugere's statement that 
the finest and most beautiful thoughts have been carried 
awaj before our times and that to glean after the ancients 
is all that remains to us. It matters ver}^ little, however, 
where the thought comes from, if it can take lodgment in 
the brain and stir the soul to vaster issues. Ingenious mod- 
erns may shape it anew and mould it into creeds and cults 
but the mind that lays hold of it is the one to give it life 
in the veritable sense of the word made flesh and dwelling 
among us. "I think therefore I Am" and am what I am, 
is a truth of life and philosophy not to be gainsaid. Where- 
fore, nothing in all the forces of time can be so vitally 
important as that which gives the trend to human thoughts. 
Balzac declared that it is religion alone that can prepare, 
subdue, and mould the mind of man to life-giving thoughts 
and there is no question that there are words of sacred writ 
that above all others can lift man into the eternal spaces 
where life and joy forever reside. But, while what Stev- 
enson calls "our little piping theologies, tracts and ser- 
mons" have so dulled and blurred the light of sacred truth 
one must go to the fountain head to find the jo3^-note which 
is ever the life-note in any human pathway. And if this 
should take him to the literary Bibles as well as the Chris- 
tian's Scriptures, it would but strengthen Balzac's claim 
that religion is at the root of all high thinking. 

Truth "married to immortal verse" takes hold of the 
mind in a way Heaven well knew when it made its poets 
"hierophants of inspiration." Coleridge foresaw the eclipse 
when he said, "Thev live no longer in the faith of reason." 



Power of the Written Word 235 

It is not, alojK; that "a verse iimy find liini wlioin a ser- 
mon flies," hut tliat it can stay with him in an hour of need 
to turn percJiance the whole current of liis thoughts from 
darkness and despair to courage and light. In the midst 
of the confusion and unrest enveloping all life and thought 
at this hour, may still be heard an under cry for some one to 
sing us the song of tlie etei'nal, and deep in the heart of 
humanity persists the faith that that song will ever be a 
song of joy. "The pendulum of the years will swing back," 
says one writer, "and bring again to the ears of men the 
music of mighty poets who will sing, not of wars and empire, 
nor yet of things sociological, metaphysical or psycholog- 
ical, but the immortal song full of the heat and glow of tiie 
eternal hopes and emotions of the human heart." 

To recognize the supremacy of spirit and let tiie kindred 
spirit within him unite him to the supreme source of joy and 
power is the working hypothesis recommended to man by 
more teachers in fact than the one who presents it as "the 
central tenet of the Christian faith." That it is this, and 
more, masters who perceive that "sensible and conscientious 
men all over the world are of one religion" are not slow to 
show us. And in this they can safely rest, that, whether 
from the Hindu Vedas or the Christian Scriptures, from 
Socrates or Bergson, from David or Tagore, the thought 
comes that ancliors man in the "God consciousness" for his 
strength and hope, the peace that passeth understanding 
flows into his soul at that hour and the light that is not of 
day illumines all his way. To find out where this heart of 
joy resides and give it a voice beyond singing was the high 
calling which Stevenson set for the writers, and it may be 
well that "trenchant essayists" and spiritual advisors are 
concerned to remind those who let fall the drop of ink that 
makes millions think, of this high charge. 



NOTE TIME BY ITS GAIN, NOT LOSS 

MAN as a progressive being, has ^^et to find himself. 
To get lost, like Dante, "about midway" in tlie jour- 
ney of his life, is his wonted exploit. It is much the fault 
of the calendar, of course. It set him reckoning life by 
figures on a dial and when a certain point was reached, it 
palmed off on him the illusion that the best had gone, and 
what remained was cheerfully to be designated the decline 
of life. But Time has about had this jest out with man. 
Alfred the Great, with his notched candle, can no longer 
make a tallow-dip of existence. Back of him is the bright 
sibyl of life, whispering through all science, count minutes 
by sensations and not by calendars and every moment is a 
gain and the whole race a life. Man was not made a wheel- 
work, to wind up in youth and be discharged of all his gifts 
and forces as life goes on. "Grown, his growth lasts," and 
still he learns a thousand things a minute and never twice 
the same. It is curious how even clocks and pessimists could 
delude man into the idea of looking backwards for the 
strength and glory of his years, or halting mournfully in 
the low-vaulted past, while ever the dome more vast was 
beckoning him onward. And yet the depressing spell has 
been upon him. "We wiU not believe," says Emerson, "that 
there is any force in today to rival or recreate the beautiful 
yesterday." "We linger in the ruins of the old tent, where 
once we had bread and shelter and organs nor believe that 
the spirit can feed, shelter, and nerve us again. We fancy 
tliat we cannot find again, aught so dear, so sweet, so grace- 

236 



Note Time by Its Gain, Not Loss 237 

ful." And, meantime, the very violets in the grass, and the 
Maybloom on all the hillsides are proclaiming the eternal 
Genesis of life, and what even a blind girl calls the "large 
certainties" in the unmeasured scale of being. "We cannot 
go forward, however, without leaving some things behind," 
says a most up-to-date philosopher, and that really seems 
to be the key-note to much of the difficulty. The baby 
wants its rattle, the boy his hoby-horse, while Nature's 
kindly nurse is offering him the larger gifts which he will 
not see. Compensation is the law of Life. There is a gain 
for every loss, and not a feeling or experience touches the 
soul without pushing it forward, often, perhaps, against 
its will. Aye, even that dark Matrix sorrow, sends forth 
the newborn spirit, as the poet tells us : "Strong for im- 
mortal toil up such great heights, as crown o'er crown rise 
through Eternit3\" Indeed, if achievement is the true joy 
of life — and you will hunt long for any better one — then 
must the young-leafed Spring bow down to golden Summer, 
and Autumn crown the field. It is with the true vision and 
facult}^ divine that the artist has moulded the beautiful 
statues of opportunity and achievement, in forms of youth 
and gladness. For he who strives is always young, and to 
ride the billows of Time with clear eye, and dauntless smile, 
is ever to achieve, though no trumpets of Fame may tell it 
to the nations. With sweet insouciance, youth spurns at 
fate, but with knowledge, brave maturity scoffs at its power. 
"I know life," said one sweet victor. "It mocks you at 
every turn." But the calm smile on her face showed life 
at her feet. Howells understood this, when he said of his 
heroine that "She had glimpsed in luminous moments an 
infinite compassion, encompassing our whole being like a 
sea, where every trouble of our sins and sorrows must cease 
at last, like a circle in the water." The radiant Aphro- 



238 Note Time by Its Gain, Not Loss 

dite, rising from the sea, can feel little weight of years, and 
significantly enough, it is this luminous glimpsing of the life 
springs and verities on the part of woman herself, that is 
helping the whole world to throw off that old man of the 
, Mountains, Time, and rise to the grandeur of ever increas- 

/ ing strength and enjo\Tnent. Nothing in all the develop- 

{ ments of this wonder-working age is much more significant 

/ than the shifting forward into the lengthening years of all 

'' those interests, powers, and enthusiasms which but lately 

/ were confined to the brief span of early youth. The woman 

/ of forty-five or fifty today, is as full of zest, strength, and 

bloom as the most radiant belle of eighteen of the olden 
^ days. Indeed, it is with as much truth as satire, that a 

j brilliant English countess pictured that old-time belle as 

! now sallow and torn by the conflicting currents of the stren- 

( uous life about her, while the clear-e3^ed matron of 60 is 

/ riding the topmost wave in smiling serenity, running clubs 

\ and state conventions, or getting ready for her third hus- 

band. Meantime, Professors and students of human life, 
I on high scientific grounds, are assuring her brother man 

that the brightest and most useful period of his existence 
can only arrive when the worries and experiments of youth 
are over, and he grasps life as it is. And as for those poor 
and imaginative things known as the infirmities of age, the 
menticulturist proposes to eliminate them from the whole 
human equation. Thus time shall lose its power to make 
hollow specters of any of us, and a dream, old as the human 
heart, that somehow, time should be giving instead of tak- 
ing from life's store, will realize itself in every stage of 
being. The wings that are slowly groTsdng within the 
chrysalis of clay, vriW control the flight, and the restless- 
ness and discontent with which they have battered us about 
in our days of blindness, will be no more. Emerson, in his 



Note Time hy Its Gain, Not Loss 239 

beautiful essay on immortality, represents two friends ab- 
sorbed deeply in the spirit life, and mysteries, who met ever 
along the dividing years with the question, "What light?" 
And, gazing into each other's eyes with that sole thought, 
they never saw that Time was whitening the hair or blanch- 
ing the cheek of either. They were young and eager souls 
to each other, wrapped ever in the warm glow of the fade- 
less spirit. It is sweet to think that the time will come 
when all friends will meet, and look into each others' faces 
with much such spirit sight and questioning, and science is 
not slow to tell us that that way lies Arden's forest, and 
immortal youth. Nature has ever done her utmost to fill 
each year with equal bloom. She never painted an Easter 
lily or a May violet a shade fairer for any vision of youth 
that was brought to bear upon it, despite all the poetic fic- 
tions that have been palmed off on us in that direction. 
But Ah ! she has waited long for that one spirit breath 
"rose beauty above" to "Pant through the blueness, and 
perfect the Summer" for purblind man. Perhaps Mitchni- 
koff was right, and man's early years are too troubled, too 
strenuous, for that fine spirit breath to reach him. The 
harvest of a quiet eye may be indeed the one to gather in 
the perfect sheaf of Life. In any case, the field is rich and 
endless. The golden age is always before and not behind 
any growing creature, and friends may well look in each 
other's countenances, to behold what is found, not lost, il- 
luminated, not darkened, in the widening pathway of end- 
less being. Even friendship itself sifts out the chaff as the 
shadows lengthen, and that "masterpiece of nature," the true 
friend, comes only with the years. "I thought you had a 
little friend with you today. Tommy," said a lady to a child 
who was walking disconsolate and alone about a playground 
where the favorite playmate had been wont to shadow him. 



/ 



S-IO Note Time hy Its Gain, Not Loss 

"I have a little friend, but I hate him," replied the hon- 
est lad, and the sweet vicissitudes of early friendship are 
well represented in the truthful answer. Bacon knew life, 
when he declared that friends, like wine, grew richer as they 
grew older. In truth, too, poets and philosophers are be- 
ginning to tell us this of all good things, and over against 
the long madness that has flung every gift worth having into 
one fierce cauldron of youth, is the saner vision that now 
reserves a few allurements for man's ripening years. 



A WORD MORE 

THE last word on manners was not with our gentle 
Emerson, difBcult as it might be to find anything more 
exhaustive and refined than his treatment of that subject. 
Speaking from the social standpoint, his exquisite and dis- 
cerning canvas of the much canvassed theme leaves nothing 
to be added. It was when he covered the whole life-field with 
the assertion that there is always time for courtesy that he 
struck ground where some things remain to be said. Pre- 
eminently, too, America is the place to say them. The au- 
thor who carries the proposition into the business world 
makes a fair start in that direction when he declares that 
the Americans spoil more business through lack of good 
manners than in any other way. 

Yet to leave the matter there is much like expecting to 
save sinners by convicting them of sin. It is not difficult 
to convince a nation of hustlers in every line of business that 
they are deficient in manners, and no doubt the worse for 
it, since many of the poor driven creatures have a trouble- 
some sense of such drawbacks in their business careers. But 
to convert them to a belief that there is always time for 
courtesy is a work of grace that would require a whole 
gospel to set forth — perhaps, too, a new code of manners 
to meet the need. 

It seems hard for some people to realize that the man- 
ners of the drawing-room can never be made to fit the busi- 
ness world. The street-car conductor who told two ladies 
exchanging courteous farewells while he waited past time 

241 



242 A Word More 

for one of them to alight that his car was "no 'ception par- 
lor" may have failed in his manners but he certainly indi- 
cated the failure of parlor manners in such a place. The 
gentlemanly railroad officials who furnish formulas for the 
ticket agent to use in meeting the inane questions put to 
them by the traveling public, and all manner of explicit di- 
rections with tickets and wrappers for the traveler him- 
self, know something of the difficulties to be encountered in 
preserving the courtesies of their tremendous business. Ap- 
parently, too, they have a fair sense of the ground of those 
difficulties, for when a lady, recently inquiring for her 
train, was able to give its name and number, a higher official 
standing near smilingly declared that she was one in a 
thousand. 

When it comes to dealing with different lines of life and 
activity the laws of behavior may indeed "yield to the en- 
ergy of the individual." In professional as well as business 
life, the more energetic the worker the less time is left for 
courtesy iij the common acceptation of the term. Doctors, 
authors and editors are often held up as examples of 
breaches of etiquette in their dealings with lesser creatures. 
Yet no doubt they all suffer serious drains upon their time 
and energy by people wholly ignorant of the demands of 
their calling or the etiquette that properly belongs to it. 
Even the very forms of speech in the business and profes- 
sional world carry sometimes a special meaning in their 
place that outside of it might seem objectionable if not of- 
fensive. A very gracious editor of a large newspaper who 
rather prided himself on maintaining perfect courtesy 
toward all callers, fell woefully from grace by simply ap- 
plying the newspaper term "Stuff" to a contribution one 
lady brought him. A brief glance at the Ms. showed him 
that it belonged to a class of matter they had ceased to 



A Word More 243 

publish. But when he inadvertently told her that they were 
not using stuff of that nature, she exclaimed indignantly : 
"Stuff is it, sir ! Well, at least I thought I was coming into 
the presence of a gentleman," and the fine garment of man- 
ners ceased to adorn that autocrat of the press for her and 
her set from that hour. 

Editors perhaps have taken warning from experiences of 
that kind, for they now couch their answers to the undesired 
applicants for their favor in such gracious and beguiling 
language that it is rather a pleasure to be rejected by them. 
Indeed, there are some of the busiest editors who will spare 
time for words of encouragement with a returned Ms. that 
ought to let them into the kingdom of heaven, as angels 
of the helping hand now open it. 

The greatest are the kindliest in every instance, and this 
may be a point worth noting in that plea for manners in the 
business world which the students of the subject are now 
presenting. It naturally connects itself with that finer view 
of business which holds the human element above all systems 
or scientific formulas that were ever devised; for it takes 
a man of large mind and heart and thorough understanding 
of mankind to realize the power of simple kindliness, from 
which all good manners proceed, in dealing with men every- 
where. The old Greek sage who said that the charm of a 
man is his kindness gave man the prime rule for winning 
his cause in any field where human nature figures, and the 
growing sense of human brotherhood adds the crowning im- 
pulse to Christian courtesy toward every one with whom 
man in any station or relation has to do. 

The general manager of a large business concern knew 
well the ground of success when he looked for a sales man- 
ager who was "big and broad mentally, but most of all a 
man who was human." The man who is big and human, 



244 A Word More 

though he may not find time for the forms of courtesy pre- 
scribed by pohte society, will never forget the respect due 
to the human being in all his manner and demeanor toward 
him. It is the pompous clerk or subordinate dressed in a 
little brief authority who assumes such rude and supercilious 
airs as spoil business in his atmosphere. The great cap- 
tains of industry, the magnates in the commercial world, 
whatever else they may be, are men who maintain the cour- 
tesies of life and good breeding in business as other relations. 
It is true, however, that "good manners need the support of 
manners in others" and the people with whom business men 
have to deal may not give exactly the support indicated. 

"Business tips to Americans" might take into account 
the good or ill effect which the manners of the general pub- 
lic toward those who serve it naturally have. People of 
any country who fail in civility to the humblest clerk or 
employe in any field must help to spoil business more seri- 
ously perhaps than they realize, as well as some other things 
much finer than business. 

The changes in economic and industrial lines which send 
women of established social position into the business world 
have done much toward bringing the amenities of life to bear 
upon it, and still there is room for something more. From 
the Christmas shopper to the mistress of the mansion there 
is still too little of that kindly consideration for those that 
serve them which brings the gentle word and manner that 
true courtesy and good breeding demand, and above all the 
social ideals of the hour. From the ^'noblesse oblige" of the 
old order to the human brotherhood and equality of the 
new, the transition is not sufficiently complete to have wiped 
out class distinctions, and curtness rather takes the place 
of condescension in the dealings of the upper classes with 



A Word More M5 

the lower, which, though less humiliating, is certainly not 
more conducive to good manners. 

When all is told it is the Christian ideal of loving kind- 
ness toward all, which "the first true gentleman that ever 
breathed" brought to the world, that must prevail if men 
are ever to achieve that genuine courtesy for which there 
is always time. 



LOVE'S TROUBLES 

We are all born for love. The strangest thing about it is however, 
that while love is the one eternal and transcendent passion, there is 
none less sympathized with by others in cases where its existence does 
not conform to every custom and convention sanctioned by time and 
tradition. 

— Johnson. 

SHAKESPEARE was by no means the less Shakespeare 
when he reckoned Love's troubles among the crowning 
ills that "make calamity" of earthly life. Even at its best 
estate its encounter with time is calamitous enough to war- 
rant the poets in all the mournful strains they have given 
to "Love in such a wilderness as this." It is not in the 
tragedies and suicides that find their way into the daily 
papers of all nations that the ruinous work of love in blind 
human pathways is greatest. In hearts that never betray 
a sign of this anguish to the world its wounds are deadliest 
and in the simple fact that the course of true love never 
does run smooth lies a depth of universal sorrow and loss 
that ought to find some mitigation if love is to retain any 
foothold on our troubled earth. Indeed long ago one stu- 
dent of the case declared that "AH the evils we know on 
earth, find in the violence done to love their full and legiti- 
mate birth." 

Unless one is to liold with Hardy, that man is in the 
toils of some malicious power bent on causing suffering, it 
is impossible to believe that so divine a spirit as love was 
sent on earth to work such havoc in human hearts and lives. 
It was a risky business no doubt to let Love follow man out 
of Eden into a world of thorns and thistles and that com- 

246 



Love's Troubles 247 

mercialisni vvhicli is now found to be the original sin. Yet 
there seems to be no sufficient reason for fortune, even in 
such a world, to prove "an unrelenting foe to Love" if man 
could put some right estimate upon life itself. That "Love 
is life's fine centre and includes heart and mind" is a truth 
that more than poets recognize, yet it is in a mad chase for 
what they call life that Love is lost to a majority of man- 
kind. By this blindness all manner of counterfeits for love 
are caught up to meet the passing needs or ideas of a con- 
ventional life and society and thus the fulness of life which 
is ever in love is comparatively unknown to the race. Mean- 
time the haunting dream of it, or perchance some unauthor- 
ized acquaintance with it, fills with pathetic yearning and 
unrest the souls of hapless mortals. In the beginning it was 
not so, as the Good Book itself declares, but because of the 
hardness of men's hearts all this abuse of life and love came 
about. Worse still it has come to be accepted so compla- 
cently as a part of man's make-up that one of the greatest 
of the matchless French writers presents his hero in the 
toils of two or three imperfect loves and at the end declares 
he "was a great sinner" but, in big capitals, "A MAN." 
If nature's verdict "This was a man" is the one in point, 
as Shakespeare made it, sinners against Love could hardly 
merit it, since there great nature allows no shuffling. To 
be true to tlie one Love of his heart and soul despite all time 
or fortune can bring against it, is the victory over life and 
death she imperatively demands. Graciously, too, she has 
marked out the way for man to know the true Love from the 
false. There arc women, said John J. Ingalls, whom to love 
makes it impossible ever to love another. What surer rem- 
edy could be devised for the fickle and imperfect loves that 
leave man still hungering for another. "Whoever has loved 
twice has never loved at all. A man may have two passions, 



248 Love's Troubles 

never two loves," wrote Alexander Duman, recognizing as 
Ingalls did nature's provision in the case. To be sure one 
sorry cynic observes that "every man seeks his ideal woman, 
but heaven only knows when he finds her — ^he never does." 
That, however, is a gross libel upon the race. Every man 
and every woman knows it full well when the true all-satis- 
fying love takes possession of the soul and if every child of 
earth would wait for that assurance though there might be 
fewer marriages there would be an end to the false and 
wretched ones which hold man back from all the Eden joy 
and glory designed for him. But meantime such dire 
calamities attend the thing called love in the path of marry- 
ing mortals that they might be tempted to imitate the dis- 
tracted nations that in the face of loud pretensions to broth- 
erly love were but yesterday found declaring in the fiery 
blasts of war "enough of that kind of love, let us try hatred 
instead." At least hatred carries an open front and men 
may face it or turn their backs on it as they choose. But 
who can honorably escape from the evils of unhappy loves 
that have entangled them in their social, perchance legal, 
meshes? Above all who can measure the wreck of joy and 
power they effect in that fine seat and centre of life where 
love resides ? The proud silence in which the victims of love's 
wounds hide their pains and losses, renders this evil more 
dark and deadly than any other in human pathways. The 
woman who recently declared, in a prize essay, that of all 
the achievements of her life she was proudest of the living 
lie that enabled her to turn a smiling front to family and 
society while enduring a loathsome hell with a husband who 
loved and supported another woman, supposedly unknown 
to her, unearthed a condition in human affairs that tells 
what beastly wrongs, crosses and concealments in love may 
cover. Jacob serving seven years for Rachel only to have 



Love's Troubles 249 

Leah imposed upon him for family reasons and the custom 
of a country is a patriarchal lunacy not unknown to our 
own times. But recently comes a story of a selfish mother 
who pledged a son of eighteen not to marry while any of the 
family relatives had need of him, and it was not until he was 
in his seventy-eighth year that the last of those relatives gra- 
ciously died and freed him for old age's chance in the rosy 
realm of love. Not infrequently some departing husband or 
wife will take steps to prevent any future unions in the one 
left behind, although admitting by this very act the pitiful 
failure of their own. Let the foresworn chance of the ideal 
love and wedded life cross the path of such a darkly bound 
victim, and the height of earthly woe and martyrdom is 
reached. Nothing in all the range of time can work such mis- 
ery in human lives as this same love which was no doubt meant 
to bring the quintessence of joy to all lives. For- 
tunately, too, it is not left without witnesses to its su- 
preme worth in the right hands. There are homes of spot- 
less purity, infinite peace, where heaven tunes the harp of 
life to such love "as spirits feel in worlds whose course is 
equable and pure" and the gates of Eden open to man as 
when time began. 

"Love is the only good in the world," says Browning, and 
clearly it is the only Good upon which the ideal home that 
is the hope of the world can be founded. Further still it 
is the only Good that carries its own assurance of the eternal 
home where all is love. Whoever has truly loved knows that 
the wondrous life he has entered into is endless — is one with 
the life of God. 

He who would find life therefore must find love, for he 
who misses Love has scarcely crossed the threshold of that 
sacred temple of Life whose dome pierces "the white radiance 
of eternity." 



MARRIAGE AS A DUTY 

THAT life for men of these momentous days "consists 
entirely of duties" is a proposition that might reach 
beyond the stern Briton by whom it was propounded. But 
when it comes to reckoning marriage among those duties, 
it is not strange that some men, like the lad who was told 
that it was his duty to love a disagreeable neighbor, wish 
that they could be got in duty free. Of all things that elude 
the intermeddlers, pious or impious offices, this matter of 
taking a partner for life is the supreme one. Marriage may 
go by destiny, as the great Bard claims, but need and ex- 
pediency strike chill notes in the case till manifest destiny 
shows itself on some higher plane. 

"Hail wedded love! Mysterious law, true source of hu- 
man offspring," wrote England's poet of the golden lyre 
and the nation that gave Milton to the world may well be 
confounded at the idea of marrying to replenish the race 
numerically. Considering what hasty and hap-hazard mar- 
riages have done for the race it seems the climax of folly 
to look for any benefit along such lines. Indeed all the 
long struggle of mankind to reach the heights looks to the 
ideal marriage, the "marriage of true minds" for its real- 
ization. 

To lower the standard of marriage would be about the 
last calamity war's aftermath could bring upon the World. 
Not very much farther would it have to go in the backward 
path to make the forcible seizure of wives and the fate of 

250 



Marriage as a Duty 251 

the Sabine women a part of this principle of expediency and 
necessity which it advocates. For although "attractive 
girls" may truly appear in the returning soldiers' horizon, 
yet the mutual nature of that attraction can no more be as- 
sured in their path than any other. 

"Much ado there was God wot 
"He wold love and she wold not, 

wrote an old English ballad maker in the days when attrac- 
tive girls were much more ready to take the men that were 
"willing" to marry them than in our time. Half-hearted 
and one-sided love affairs make more and more ado in hu- 
man pathways as the world advances especially in relation 
to marriage where the two hearts that beat as one are the 
prime necessity, and 3'^et as much the sport of chance or fate 
as when Dan Cupid began his capricious work with human 
lives and loves. Whatever has become of romance or re- 
ligion in these desperate days, love still follows its own 
laws and leading and defies the efforts of courts or ar- 
mies to move it against its will. Not even his own will 
can control the entrance of that mysterious visitant that 
takes possession of the lover's soul and sways it to its pur- 
poses. "Is human love the growth of human will.?" asks 
one of the world's great novelists and the answer is written 
in the woeful story of many a hero and heroine who sought 
to bring will and worldly interests to bear upon human af- 
fections. Duty and expediency may prevent the expression 
of love in its own direction but neither of them can turn it 
in any other direction and when this fact is duly recognized 
"wedded love— true source of human offspring" will shape 
human life and wipe out forever all laws or theories touch- 
ing marriage save those that Love has made. 



252 Marriage as a Duty 

"Marriage is a matter of more worth than to be dealt in 
by attorneyship," wrote the master seer of the ages, but of 
what celestial worth, no vision of man may divine till Love 
has had its perfect work in human lives and unions. 



THE WORD AND THE IDEA 

NO one denies the power of words. Yet the half of it 
has never been told. The very meaning of existence it- 
self has been lost in one dark word — dead. "It is an as- 
tonishing thing how man believes in words," said Turgenev, 
and it is more than probable that the overpowering horror 
that invests that process of rebirth, of life's renewals, which 
runs through all nature is comprehended in the blind ac- 
ceptance and belief humanity attaches to that word, dead. 
The idea of death, born of darkness and superstition, has 
troubled the sages of all history, yet wiping out completely 
the form of speech that carried this idea has been too feebly 
considered even in their counsels to bear much relation to 
the common tongue. Browning's earnest prayer to his 
friends, "Never speak of me as dead," carried an admoni- 
tion that might work a veritable revolution in human 
thought, and life which is the outcome of thought — if widely 
heeded. Shakespeare expressed the extraordinary situa- 
tion which the word and the idea have brought about when 
he said, 

"Of all the wonders that I yet have heard 
It seems to me most strange that men should fear, 
Seeing that death, a necessary end, 
Will come when it will come." 

Viewed as a necessary end to one stage of being in Life's 
progressive path it would indeed be most strange that any 
rational creature should attach to death the fear and horror 

253 



254 The Word and the Idea 

that commonly becloud it and to call it by some better name 
may be a prime step in that victory over death which the 
Master-seer of the ages predicted for mankind. One of the 
modern poets touches the core of the matter when he writes, 

"Words are great forces in the realm of life 
Who talks of evil conjures into shape 
That formless thing and gives it life and scope 
This is the law; then let no word escape 
That does not breathe of everlasting hope." 

Only he who can master the laws of the mind and their 
supreme influence upon all the character and events of life 
could duly measure what it has meant to humanity to have 
the chrysalis instead of the winged butterfly give the con- 
trolling idea to the physical changes which from insect to 
man marks the progress of evolutionary being throughout 
all its realm. That the Supreme Master of life and all 
its forces declared of the loved one who had lain three days 
in his grave "He is not dead," should warrant the Christian 
world at least in denying that any of their loved ones were 
dead or ever thinking of them in such ghastly light. The 
fact is, too, that the human heart does reject the awful 
thing the word, in its common acceptation implies, and some- 
times, to mourning souls a strange sense of the living spirit, 
closer and dearer than ever before, stirs a pulse of real ec- 
stacy as in a bond of life and love lifted beyond all reach of 
time and man's mortality. Especially is this true where 
barriers of time and fate have kept kindred spirits apart in 
their earthly pilgrimage. Above all the anguish of the 
human separation in that last great change, flashes the 
quick and rapturous consciousness of the beloved one set 
free to claim his own in earth or heaven as "spirit with 
spirit may meet." Mystic, intangible as this may be, it 



The Word and the Idea 255 

belongs to those things which, persisting in consciousness, 
are declared b}' the great author of the Synthetic philosophy 
to be legitimate subjects of scientific interest and investiga- 
tion. Assuredly it belongs to those things which so foster 
the belief in that awakening from sleep which the whole logic 
of life demands that the very name of death should be lost 
in the growing light of immortality. The patient souls 
that "winning times discharge" have "passed triumphant to 
the life more large" surely deserve some better thought of 
them than the dead word dead allows. As Mr. Palmer said 
of the beloved wife and famous educator who left him for 
that larger life, "To leave the dead wholly dead is rude. 
Vivid creature that she was she must not be forgotten." 
That goes to the core of the matter. Vivid creature, that 
she was what had aught that dies to do with that flame of 
life ; what has it ever to do with the burning, yearning soul 
that with its latest human breath, cries out for life and 
the life more abundant.? 

"As the bodily powers fail, my soul grows more 
luminous," said Victor Hugo, "when I go down to the 
grave I can say I have finished my day's work, but 
I cannot say I have finished my life. My day's work will 
begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind 
alle}'^ ; it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight to open 
with the dawn." In the light of such an assurance a man 
might well say "never speak of me as dead." And that it 
is an assurance all humanity inherited when man, touched 
by the breath of the eternal, became a living soul, science 
itself must recognize in the indestructibility of all life, even 
though science may not yet penetrate the veil that shuts 
man from the fuller knowledge of the life beyond. Yet even 
that, perchance, might come to man, if the truth of his im- 
mortality were not so overborne by the thought and speech 



256 The Word and the Idea 

that keep the physical and not the spiritual phase of ex- 
istence forever in the foreground. If life, with no human 
infusions of death in the cup, were the draught held to man's 
lips, how truly might he "quaff immortality and joy" from 
the foaming beaker. Forever and forever it should be a 
song of life, not death, on human lips, and what it would 
mean to mankind one poet reveals in the ringing strain, 

"Sing me, O singer, a song of life," 
Cried an eager youth to me. 
And I sang of a life without alloy 
Beyond our years — till the heart of the boy 

Caught the golden beauty, and love, and joy. 

Of the great eternity. 



AS THE WAR REVEALED HER 

TO find some good in things evil is a philosophy of life 
which was never more desperately appealed to than 
in those mad war days. From the old theological stand- 
point of attempting to justify the ways of God to man the 
effort was as vain as ever. Even from a rationalistic stand- 
point no creature could make out why a race of intelligent 
thinking beings could not bring the ends of justice and lib- 
erty to pass without such a senseless, brutish, wholesale 
butchery of each other. Taking about any of the blessed 
results which the courageous optimists would draw from the 
unblessed carnage it is easy to see that common enlighten- 
ment should have brought them to pass ages ago. The woman 
question is pre-eminently one in point here, because it 
reached such a swift and world-wide solution in the revela- 
tion of woman's true character and worth. But what is to 
be said of a world that never found it out before. A recent 
writer directly declared that woman was completely changed 
by the war, while the significant fact that the change is 
in the public with which she has to deal does not enter into 
his calculations. Indeed the great truth that woman's 
case, like that of her brothers, has passed into the hands of 
destiny and the on-marching ages does not appear to im- 
press all beholders who consider the marvelous changes of 
this fateful hour. To realize that everlasting nature 
changes not and that woman is today what she always was 
and always will be in every essential feature of her being 
and aims, is something that may still require time to en- 

257 



258 As the War Revealed Her 

* 
graft itself on the public mind. Nor is it so very strange 
considering some preconceived ideas of woman in ante-war 
days, that man deems it almost a re-creation which pre- 
sents her now as a being "sublime in self-sacrifice," capable 
and devoted in service, rich in resource, and, as ex-Premier 
Asquith declared, "performing work without detriment to 
the prerogatives of her sex heretofore regarded as belong- 
ing exclusively to man." The picture that perturbed poli- 
ticians and social censors previously drew of modern 
woman bears little relation to such a noble sisterhood. Not 
only the "dire and forbidding features" of the Militant 
Suffragette, but the audacious and law-defying attitude of 
the social leader entered into the cartoon, and no doubt 
created an impression not easily effaced. Out of the mouth 
of the playwrights and novelists of ante-war days David 
Grant drew a conception of modern woman and what she 
was "after" that might almost warrant an idea that noth- 
ing short of a new deluge or world cataclysm of some kind 
could cut short her career and restore the good and self- 
sacrificing woman as God made her to a place in the sun. 
A being "of unstable virtue," bent upon "individual lib- 
erty," especially in the matter of "hunting the father of 
her child in or out of marriage as the approved parentage 
might declare itself." This, we are told, was the new woman 
as her "brilliant male leaders" presented her and naturally 
poor intimidated man could only see his finish in such "ad- 
vanced feminism." More naturally still, however, no woman 
on earth could possible recognize herself or her sisters in 
such a guise nor conceive how woman's struggle for the 
purer, higher ideals in all the relations of life and societ}' 
could possibly be so misconstrued. It is evident that men 
and nations never knew woman in her "noble spirit and self- 
sacrificing efficiency" before her work in this terrible hour 



As the War Revealed Her 259 

of the world's history revealed her to them. But that is 
no reason why she should be deemed in any sense a product 
of that demon's carnival of war. 

There is an old saying, "Earth waits for her Queen," 
and perchance in that final struggle of brute force the way 
was being prepared for her — nevertheless even yet it seems 
doubtful if the poor blind world would know her if she came. 



